by Den Patrick
–From the memoir of Drakina Tveit, Lead Librarian of Midtenjord Province
The entrance to the catacombs had meant to inspire patriotism in the good people of Khlystburg during the Age of Fire, when man and woman had risen up against the dragons. A statue of the Emperor stood between two pairs of double doors, though the architects had not foreseen that their ruler would be dwarfed by the entrances to and from an underworld of their own making.
‘I heard it said he flew into a rage upon coming here for the first time,’ said Felgenhauer. Both sets of doors were twenty feet high, whereas the marble effigy of His Imperial Highness struggled to reach twelve feet. ‘Needless to say, the architects didn’t get much work after the Emperor had their eyes gouged out.’
‘Tell me you’re not serious,’ said Tomasz, mouth curving in disgust. Felgenhauer gave her sergeant a long hard look. ‘All because his statue didn’t reach the height of his ego?’
‘That’s the legend, though it happened nearly ninety years ago and you know how it goes with stories, how they get embroidered, exaggerated.’ Felgenhauer stared into the face of the Emperor’s statue. The sculptor had captured that patient look Volkan Karlov so often wore, but also something of the darkness beneath. ‘But he’s capable of anything. You of all people know that. I don’t doubt the stories are true.’
Steiner listened to all of this and regarded the catacombs with growing trepidation.
‘Come on, then.’ He paced closer to the doors. ‘This is the only way through.’ The threshold to the catacombs was closed off by heavy wooden doors painted a dark and bloody red. Iron studs formed a pattern from top to bottom, black diamonds in the gloom. ‘And light some torches,’ he added a moment later. The men did as they were told after looking to Felgenhauer for confirmation. She nodded once and fell into step beside Steiner.
‘I’m beginning to think’ – Steiner rubbed his jaw – ‘that the Boyar’s information was—’
‘A touch vague,’ interrupted his aunt. She stepped forward and pushed at the door with both hands, putting her whole weight behind the effort.
Nothing happened.
Felgenhauer’s cadre joined her, Steiner among them. They pushed and grunted, putting their backs to the studded wood, but the way ahead remained closed off to them.
‘Is it possible the Emperor used the arcane to seal them up in some way?’ asked Steiner.
‘I don’t know of such an enchantment,’ replied his aunt.
‘Perhaps it’s locked,’ offered Tomasz. Steiner took a step back and hefted his sledgehammer. ‘What are you doing?’ said the former sergeant.
‘I don’t have any lock picks,’ replied Steiner with a grin. ‘Except this one.’
‘Your nephew is touched in the head,’ grumbled Tomasz as the first hammer blow hit the wooden door. A cloud of splinters exploded outwards.
‘Perhaps,’ conceded Felgenhauer. ‘But right now he’s the only thing that’s going to get us through those doors.’
Steiner raised the hammer again. This was going to take some work. The door shuddered on its hinges with the second strike.
‘It’s no good,’ complained Tomasz.
‘I’m just getting warmed up,’ replied Steiner. The sledgehammer hit the door again and connected with one of the iron studs, smashing it clean through the other side. It left a ragged hole. ‘We will get through this,’ growled Steiner, ‘You have my word on it.’
There had been more statues just inside the entrance, soldiers in armour bearing shields and maces. A dozen steps took them downwards to a causeway in a wide corridor, where the glorious dead took their final rest.
‘That’s a lot of coffins,’ said Steiner. The flickering torchlight revealed seemingly countless stone rectangles on either side of the causeway.
‘They’re sarcophagi,’ corrected Felgenhauer. ‘Coffins are made out wood.’
Steiner shrugged. ‘As long as the dead stay inside them I really don’t care what they’re called.’
Four of Felgenhauer’s cadre marched ahead, two bearing torches, the flames small and mean in the damp darkness. The other eight soldiers followed up behind, occasionally muttering to one another, their voices low.
‘Nothing feels right here,’ said Steiner.
‘It’s just your imagination,’ replied Felgenhauer. ‘No one has been down here for decades.’
The corridor’s ceiling was lost in the gloom above them, while the way ahead stretched on without end, or so it seemed. Every so often a statue loomed out of the darkness, sculpted in the likeness of woman wearing a sleeveless shift. They had a heavy quality to them, the carving bold, the stony expressions serious. The statues held out their strong arms, palms and fingers forming a bowl.
‘Their hands would have been filled with firewood,’ explained Felgenhauer in a hushed voice.
‘I’m not surprised,’ whispered Steiner. ‘It’s spiteful cold.’
‘The Emperor hoped to seed a new myth, a myth that the women of the Empire would light a way home for those in the afterlife. Even back then he was trying to supplant Frøya and Frejna.’
‘How do you know so much about this place? I thought it was closed to the public years ago.’
‘It was,’ replied Felgenhauer. ‘One of my first jobs as a newly trained Vigilant was to watch over the palace. We were told not to come down here. It was understood the catacombs didn’t need guarding.’
Steiner didn’t much care for the direction of his aunt’s conversation and glanced at the nearest sarcophagus. The lid was loose, still atop the container, but resting at an angle.
‘We were told the catacombs had defences of their own since the city folk stopped visiting,’ added Felgenhauer. ‘But I never believed it.’
‘That can’t mean anything good,’ replied Steiner. The soldier nearest to Steiner made to investigate the opened sarcophagus, but Steiner caught him by the arm before he could jump down from the causeway. ‘Let’s not make trouble for ourselves,’ whispered Steiner. He held up a finger to his lips and warned the other soldiers to be quiet. Wary eyes darted from one sarcophagus lid to another. No one said a word for fear of waking the sleeping dead.
‘I’m going to strangle that Boyar and take Vend Province for myself,’ said Tomasz with a sullen look.
‘That seems reasonable,’ replied Steiner. ‘I may even help you.’ They headed deeper into the darkness, with only the scuff of their boots to disturb the dusty silence.
‘That sarcophagus seems to have scratch marks on the outside,’ said Tomasz, gripping his two-handed axe tightly.
‘Easy now,’ soothed Felgenhauer. ‘Only the Ashen Torment can compel spirits to rise from the dead, and Steiner destroyed it.’ The men relaxed a bit.
‘There’ll be no cinderwraiths down here,’ muttered Steiner. But then he felt rather than saw a disturbance behind him and turned to see a shadow lurch away, back into the darkness. A lone torch tumbled to the causeway and rolled towards him. The men at the rear of the column turned and brandished their weapons.
‘Where did this torch come from?’ said one gruff voice.
‘Where is Jarlen?’ asked Felgenhauer. The soldiers looked from one face to another and the men at the front stopped abruptly.
‘He was right here,’ replied one of the soldiers near the back of the column. ‘Holding the torch just behind me.’ On instinct Steiner looked up just as three pale shapes descended from the blackness above them.
‘Above us!’ he shouted as the first of the attackers almost landed on top of him. The creature was the colour of old bone, with eight spindly legs some six feet long. A variety of jet-black eyes stared at Steiner, all in different sizes, while mandibles champed together in anticipation of the meal to come. The sledgehammer split the creature apart with a sickening crack and Steiner hefted the weapon and struck again.
‘Frejna’s teeth!’ The legs thrashed as the creature raged through the pain of its wounds. Steiner stamped on the creature’s head with his boot. ‘Die!’ he y
elled, slamming his foot down until the bone-coloured thing stopped moving. ‘Just die!’
Felgenhauer petrified her own attacker using the arcane. The creature turned a pale grey, shaking and trembling in an attempt to escape, but Felgenhauer’s gaze reduced the living creature to a statue in a few heartbeats. Steiner broke the petrified form apart with a deft swing of the sledgehammer.
‘Help me!’ A soldier at the rear of the column cried out as he was bitten. Three of his comrades rushed to his aid. Two-handed axes dealt a swift death to the scuttling menace. The sound of harsh cracks gave way to wet chopping noises before the men stopped attacking. Steiner glanced around and the silence of the catacombs rushed in to fill the darkness once more.
‘Is that it?’ he whispered, retrieving Jarlen’s torch from the causeway.
‘For now,’ replied Felgenhauer.
Tomasz began to curse behind her; he flailed about in the darkness with his torch, searching this way and that. ‘They got Breslov too. I can’t see him anywhere.’
Felgenhauer knelt down beside the injured man at the rear of the column. ‘Konstantin.’
The man looked at her with wide eyes; his pale face appeared waxy in the torchlight. ‘I’m sorry, Matriarch-Commissar …’ He swallowed and shivered.
‘Never mind that,’ she said softly. ‘You did your best to protect us.’
‘Thank you.’ Konstantin forced a smile and nodded. ‘And to think, I might have got out of the army if I’d survived this.’ He grinned a moment and then began to shake and fit. His comrades cradled him until the tremors subsided. Felgenhauer held his hand and smiled at him, smoothing his hair back from his brow with tender fingers. Konstantin released a long sigh and then he was gone.
‘Frøya save me,’ whispered Steiner. ‘Poison?’
Felgenhauer nodded. ‘And a virulent one at that.’
‘What are those things?’
‘Corpse spiders,’ said Felgenhauer with disgust. ‘I thought they had been eradicated. I’d never even seen one before today.’
‘I don’t understand,’ said Steiner, staring at the body of Konstantin. ‘How could something so dangerous live here at the centre of the city?’
‘Corpse spiders only reside under the mountains in Novgoruske Province,’ said Felgenhauer. ‘It’s why no one dared to go digging for coal or silver until ten years ago. They abhor daylight and prefer to feed on bone marrow.’
‘How the Hel did they get here?’ asked Tomasz.
‘And why didn’t Boyar Sokolov warn us about them?’ added Steiner.
‘We can’t think about that now,’ replied Felgenhauer. ‘We have to move.’
‘I’m not leaving Konstantin for those things,’ said Tomasz.
‘We can’t take him with us,’ replied Felgenhauer.
‘I’m not leaving him here as carrion for those bastards.’ Tomasz looked about as stern as Steiner had ever seen. ‘Bad enough they got Jarlen and Breslov.’
‘As you wish,’ replied Felgenhauer. She pointed at the youngest of the soldiers. ‘Take Konstantin back to the catacomb gates and wait for us there.’
‘But I …’ The young soldier fell silent as Felgenhauer glowered at him.
‘The rest of you, look out for each other.’ She lit her own torch and held it up. ‘There’re at least another two of those things out there and we can’t afford to lose anyone else.’
The young soldier hefted Konstantin’s corpse over his shoulder and headed back the way they had come from, though Steiner didn’t envy him the lonely task. The rest of the soldiers continued on for a time and no one spoke; the shock of losing three of their number strangled the desire to say anything. The causeway began to curve off to the left but another path lay to their right.
‘This is what I meant earlier,’ said Steiner. ‘The Boyar’s information is vague to the point of being worthless.’
‘How much did he tell you?’ asked Tomasz, an edge of irritation in his voice.
‘He said we’d need to go down before climbing up a shaft,’ replied Felgenhauer.
‘My guess is the way to the left just leads back to the entrance,’ said Steiner. ‘So we go right.’ The men shared uncertain looks but nodded in agreement and followed.
‘Karlin,’ said Felgenhauer, ‘you brought rope?’
‘And a grappling hook,’ replied a soldier from behind them. Ahead of them one of the soldiers swore and there was the sound of leather scuffing on stone. The soldier seemed to drop straight down rather than slip from the side of the causeway to fall among the sarcophagi.
‘What is it?’ Steiner pressed ahead and found that the causeway ended without warning.
‘I’m all right,’ called the soldier. He stood on a narrow ledge of rubble; the remains of the collapsed causeway no doubt.
‘Karlin, throw him the rope,’ said Felgenhauer. The soldier climbed up and brushed himself off, breathing hard.
‘When I fell I dropped my torch,’ he said. ‘The ledge is just the start of it. There’s a deeper drop beyond that. I … I didn’t see my torch hit the bottom.’
Felgenhauer looked at Steiner and sighed.
‘Damn you, Sokolov,’ muttered Steiner.
‘How much rope do we have?’ asked Felgenhauer.
‘Not enough for a drop like that,’ replied Karlin.
‘That’s what I thought,’ replied Felgenhauer. ‘The rest of you head back to the catacomb gates. Steiner and I will finish this together.’
The men stood in shocked silence a moment.
‘There has to be another way,’ said Tomasz. ‘We can’t leave you now.’
‘Tomasz.’ Felgenhauer stepped forward and took Tomasz’s head in her hands, then kissed him on each cheek. ‘If I had a thousand men like you’ – she smiled at her cadre – ‘I could take this land and make it good.’
‘Matriarch-Commissar?’ said Tomasz with an expression of almost painful confusion.
‘Go back to the entrance and keep yourselves safe.’ Felgenhauer gave them a fierce smile. ‘That’s an order!’
Steiner looked over the edge and and felt his heart sink. He had a suspicion what his aunt had in mind.
‘We’ll see you again,’ she shouted to her men.
‘I don’t think that’s the best way to—’ Steiner began to say, but before he could finish Felgenhauer took his hand and jumped over the edge, into the abyss, dragging Steiner into the depths with her.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Silverdust
The citizens of the Empire succumbed to a malaise as the old goddesses were erased from the Empire. So much of people’s identity and beliefs were bound up in Frøya and Frejna, and there were rumours of other, smaller, regional deities and hearth spirits. The Holy Synod preached that a life in service to the Empire was all that mattered; but people will always search for answers to give their lives meaning. A dull cynicism remained in the absence of the divine, and nothing Volkan Karlov did could alter it.
– From the memoir of Drakina Tveit, Lead Librarian of Midtenjord Province
The journey north through the outskirts of the city had not been without its trials. Bittervinge rarely ventured to the southern districts. Flodvind, Stonvind, and Namarii’s presence were an ample deterrent even for the father of dragons, but Silverdust had not survived for so long by being reckless. The cinderwraith had hidden in doorways like a looming shade, haunting shadows until he was satisfied the way ahead was safe. Twice he had encountered looters in Khlystburg and twice they had fled. The sight of a mirror-masked Vigilant clad in black was enough to dissuade the lawless, it seemed, even in times such as these.
How pitiful that thoughts turn to greed in times of chaos.
Silverdust’s ability to see the spirits of the dead had remained, even through his near destruction and subsequent confinement in the urn. Every step through the city revealed more of the lingering dead, those spirits too attached to the mortal realm to move on. They appeared to Silverdust as tongues of blue and white fire with human face
s and arms contorted in expressions of mourning and grief.
Go now, gentle ones. There is nothing for you here.
But the spirits were too overcome by the horror of their passing, too confused by their sudden deaths, to be able to pass on. Silverdust moved ever onwards, a ghost among ghosts. The sometime Exarch and now restored cinderwraith had taken the secret ways through the city, down into forgotten basements, following tunnels that twisted in maddening ways, past lonely dead ends, under tumbledown archways. At last he reached his destination. To anyone else it might seem as if he stood in the aftermath of a collapsed cavern. All about him lay mounds of rubble and broken statuary, dank earth and broken bones. A halo of silver light played about Silverdust’s feet, turning back the dark and illuminating the source of his lonely pilgrimage: the final resting place of Alexandr Vartiainen, Steiner’s great-grandfather. The sarcophagus of the Emperor’s bodyguard had been interred deep below the Imperial Palace now deeper still, due to subsidence.
It is good to see you, old friend. The cinderwraith laid a leather-gloved hand on the cold stone. Truthfully, they had never been more than comrades. In life Alexandr had been a straightforward man, both practical and loyal. He’d had little time for the Spriggani and his arcane secrets. Alexandr had warned Volkan Karlov against Serebryanyy Pyli. ‘No good can come from meddling with such powers,’ he’d said time and again so many decades before.
This is all my fault, Alexandr, and I have need of your counsel. Will you appear to me one last time? Will you help me set right everything I helped make wrong?
The sarcophagus lay at a steep angle, having fallen from the catacombs above. Whether it had been natural subsidence or a deliberate collapse Silverdust couldn’t say, but it was a sorry resting place for someone who had helped the Emperor defeat Bittervinge.
Please, Alexandr, I have great need of you.
A flaming torch appeared from the darkness above, plummeting to the ground. It hit the rubble just a dozen feet away from where Silverdust stood. The mirror-masked cinderwraith conjured a spear of searing flame and waited. His senses warned him of a powerful presence far above, far more powerful than anything he had encountered save for Bittervinge himself. He focused his arcane senses and discovered he was mistaken. It was not a single unified power in the darkness, but three distinct and unique sources: a person and two artefacts. And they were approaching with haste.