by GJ Kelly
“And I would say a polite ‘oh’, respecting the old duffer as I do for his service to the Crown. To you, I merely sniff with complete indifference. Do you see any lights there, Ven?”
“No, miThal.”
“Not even on the ramparts?”
“Not even there, miThal.”
“Could the D’ith shield themselves somehow from view of the Sight, Allazar?”
The wizard stared at Gawain so utterly nonplussed that Gawain too was lost for words, and shrugged as if to say ‘well?’
“Kallaman Goth evaded the Sight at Urgenenn’s Tower, Longsword, as did the Meggen with him. The walls of the tower and the pedestal were thick, and of a vitreous stone which shielded them from view. The walls of the Hallencloister are thick too.”
“Thick, and with no Blue Guard patrolling atop them?”
Allazar shrugged. “Perhaps, the place being impregnable, they do not feel the need for such commonplace precautions as watchmen. Besides, we have at least two miles of open ground to cross before we attain the cobbled perimeter without the Hallencloister walls. There are, I am sure, limits to what even the Sight can achieve.”
“My apologies, Ranger Venderrian. The wizard’s veiled chiding reminds me that I am become far too accustomed to having the Sight beside me. I’m in danger of becoming complacent and expecting too much of a ranger’s eyes. Please, sing out as and when anything is revealed to you, and until you do, I’ll try to abandon my habit of asking questions which your silence has already answered.”
Venderrian nodded graciously, and raised his hand to the faded emblem of the kindred on his tunic by way of a reply.
“Is it me,” Ognorm sniffed, wiping his nose and the rain dripping from it on the back of his sleeve, “Or is it gettin’ a wee bit breezier the closer we get?”
“It isn’t you, master Ognorm,” Allazar announced as they moved off again. “The weather here is perfectly normal, wizards don’t control it, as I have said.”
“What he means is,” Gawain declared, “We’re climbing up out of the hole we were in and it’s windier up here nearly five hundred feet above the level of the sea.”
“Heh,” the dwarf chuckled. “That’d been my reckonin’ too, melord.”
A mile from the summit of the rise, Gawain paused, frowning, and turned in his saddle to survey the land behind them.
“Longsword?”
“Curiosity. You can see the band of ‘weed clearly from this height, now the drizzle has eased and the wind is dispersing it.”
From the vantage of height the dark band of dying Flagellweed was clearly visible through wisps of misty damp, sown in an arc to the east. Another lay to the north, and yet another to the south. Not a full circle by any means, but enough to deter a casual incursion. Doubtless, he thought, another swathe would lie to the west, on the far side of the citadel.
“Curious indeed,” Allazar mumbled. “Yet not as curious as the lack of banners and pennants yonder at the ‘cloister. There was ever a colourful display, flags of all lands flown from rampart and tower to show the D’ith’s welcome to all.”
“Perhaps they took them down when they sealed the gates against all the kindred, and abandoned the world to its fate, whitebearded bastards. Now that we’re this close to it, it doesn’t seem so large and imposing as it appeared before.”
“No, distance does provide such an illusion when nothing is nearby to permit a measure of scale. I remember thinking the same when I left to take up service in Callodon. But still, there should at least be the Star of the D’ith flying from each of the four towers.”
“And if you find that a trifle discomfiting, Allazar, consider this. Ven hasn’t started singing out yet. There’s still no sign of any watchmen upon the walls.”
“Ain’t so much as a bird flappin’ up there, melord. Not to my orbs there ain’t.”
“Nor to mine, friend Ognorm,” Ven muttered.
“Arr, p’raps they’re just a lot more sensible than us lot, and are keepin’ dry out the rain.”
“Perhaps,” Allazar agreed, attempting a cheerful lie to dampen their rising anxiety.
He failed.
oOo
9. Eyem D’ith
“Those gates are big,” Gawain mumbled as they crested the summit of the rise.
The walls of the immense citadel were perhaps four hundred yards from the flat top of the rise where the companions sat saddle, and for the last hundred of those yards a great cobbled way had been constructed running the full perimeter of the Hallencloister. Set into the wall facing them, three gates of iron-bound and studded oak, the one in the centre immense, the lesser gates set seventy yards either side of the main portal. Even those lesser gates were imposing.
So too were the walls. The east wall before them was two hundred and forty yards long, thirty feet high, and according to Allazar, fifteen feet thick. They were made, he said, of white-stone blocks fitted so closely together no joints or seams were visible. No handholds. No footholds. Just sheer, vertical rock, mystic hard. At the top, no sharp edges for grappling hooks to snag, the outward-facing crenels and merlons of the battlements radiused to prevent just such a means of ingress. No trees nearby for the construction of siege engines or ladders. No windows, no loopholes, no openings in the wall of any kind. Except the gates.
Gawain would grudgingly admit to being impressed, if anyone had asked him. But all of them were too busy staring in disbelief at the sheer rock wall before them, and looking for movement atop it. Even this close, Venderrian had seen no lights, either within the walls or on top of them. And it was deathly quiet. Not even the sound of dripping rainwater run-off, except from themselves and their horses and those fell on wild grass and soft earth; there were no projections on the wall or jutting from it from which such drips might fall noisily onto the cobbles below.
“Well,” Gawain sighed, drawing himself higher in the saddle. “We can sit here and gape at this boring spectacle, or watch with excitement as the wizard boldly strides forward and rings the bell.”
“There’s a thing an’ no mistake,” Ognorm announced, his voice gruff, “Didn’t think we’d get to vote.”
Gawain snorted his appreciation, and glanced across at the wizard to his right.
“Something is very wrong here, Longsword. Even with the gates sealed, some sign of life should be apparent. Sounds, if not sights.”
“Didn’t you say the walls were thick?”
“Yes, but the five cloisters were filled with noise in daytime, all manner of concussions and explosions and failed experiments disturbing the peace. The crackle of white fire, shouts of alarm when targets were missed, hoots of laughter from the younger boys when others failed in their attempts at simple tasks… all these are absent. All those sounds I heard when I left through the south gate, so long ago now.”
“The gates were open then, and you said they were thick too.”
Allazar blinked, and nodded as much to himself as to Gawain. “Yes, yes that is true. Well then. I shall advance, and try the east gate, though it was always the least used of them, few coming in from or going out to Arrun when I studied here.”
Gawain nodded, keeping his expression regally inscrutable. Allazar’s shock was almost palpable now that they found themselves on the threshold of the citadel, and had found it silent, and utterly bereft of welcome.
The wizard nudged his horse with his knees and moved off towards the east gate. Gawain gave him a twenty-yard head start and then followed quietly behind, waving the others forward too, eyes fixed on the ramparts. Still Venderrian remained silent, and when Allazar’s horse clopped onto the cobbled perimeter road, the sound was as startling as thunderclaps to their ears.
Directly ahead of them lay the east gate, and Gawain tried hard not to gape. It was set and mounted so that its iron-studded face stood flush with the wall about it, and there seemed not a paper’s thickness of a gap between its wood and the wall anywhere around its perimeter. He looked for a joint which might give some indi
cation as to the manner in which it opened, inwards, outwards, cracking down the middle into a pair of leaf doors swinging on heavy hinges, or perhaps even rising or lowering by means of some immense winch. Alas he couldn’t say, for he saw none.
But this close, Allazar’s horse now clopping slowly some thirty yards from the vast portal, they could see the dull gleaming of a small brass bell fixed to the wall to the right of the arched entrance, a long and slender rope dangling limp and almost to the ground from the clapper.
Still Venderrian remained silent, casting his gaze up and around. But for the sound of hooves on cobbles, Gawain felt sure he would’ve heard his heart pounding, such was the tension now rising about them as misty clouds of damp swirled.
He saw Allazar draw his horse to a halt by the archway, transfer his staff to his left hand, and then reach out with his right to grasp the bell-rope. He jerked that rope sharply three times, the sound of the bell sweet, loud, and clear, the high note drifting all around them, and though it might have been nothing more than freakish coincidence, the breezes chose that precise moment to abate, stilling the misty rain around them for a few brief heartbeats while the sound of the last peal decayed, and became a memory.
Nothing.
Ognorm’s horse snorted and shook its head, the bridle rattling and drops of rain flying this way and that.
Allazar backed his horse a pace or two, and shouted up at the ramparts:
“Eyem D’ith! Dar me enthra!”
Nothing.
Again Allazar cried out as if to the heavens, his voice mystic hard and ringing clear like the bell. “Eyem D’ith! Dar me enthra!”
Again, nothing.
“Wots ‘e sayin’, melord?”
“I think, Ognorm,” Gawain whispered, “He’s saying I am D’ith, open the vakin door you whitebeard bastards or I’ll rip off your heads and poop down your necks.”
“Arr. Trust a wizard to use five words when it’d take us lot about twenty.”
Gawain couldn’t hold back a smile, and he turned to acknowledge the dwarf’s humour, and almost broke into an outright laugh when he saw the serious look Ognorm gave him in return.
But the clopping of hooves on cobbles drew his attention to the gate, watching Allazar moving off slowly, heading towards the lesser gate seventy yards further north. They followed, and there, again Allazar leaned from the saddle, and rang the bell fixed beside the smaller arch. Again he repeated his calls, and again, nothing.
On the wizard rode, gathering pace, around the northeast corner of the east wall, and riding along the north. Three more doors there were, the Hallencloister symmetrical, and at each of those three doors, Allazar repeated his ritual. He rang the bell three times. He waited. He called up to the ramparts to demand entry, and receiving no reply, moved on.
For Gawain’s part, he studied the northern horizon, and saw nothing but the rolling plains of Juria through the drizzle. Nothing of course except the arc of decaying ‘weed laying dark against the paler grasses of the plains some three or four miles away.
The sound of the wizard’s horse trotting along the road drew him back, and they followed Allazar around the northwest corner, and watched in silence and increasing puzzlement as the ritual was repeated. Ring the bell, demand entry. Nothing. Gawain noted absently that he’d had been right. There was an arc of Flagellweed to the west, dying like the rest. But it was smoke on the south-western horizon that drew his attention, and he pointed towards it.
“I don’t recall a village or hamlet yonder,” he declared.
“No good askin’ me, melord. Ain’t from ‘round these parts, sorry.”
“I too am unfamiliar with the geography of these plains, miThal.”
“Sorry. I was thinking out loud. Allazar!”
The wizard almost jumped out of his skin at the sudden shout, and Gawain’s two companions flinched and stared up at the ramparts.
“Honestly, if they’re not going to put in an appearance with all the noise the wizard’s been making, I hardly think they’ll bother with me,” Gawain grumbled.
When Allazar rode up, Gawain drew his attention to the distant smoke.
“Is there a habitation over there?”
“Not that I recall, Longsword, though it’s possible a new one has sprung up on the plains. A homestead, perhaps, or a farm or hamlet. Who is to say? It has been a long time since I was here or hereabouts.”
“I’ve never been here or hereabouts, I’m relying entirely on the memory of your map, and others. Come, let’s see you ring the bloody bells and shout at the clouds on the south wall, and then we’re back to where we started.”
“I like this not, Longsword, truly. Ever since the Hallencloister was built, long before darken days of yore, no wizard of the D’ith has ever been refused entry. This, this fortress, this citadel, this enclave, was always the one place a wizard might depend upon for peace and protection! To utter the ancient call for sanctuary and find the gates opening not is a grievous wrong bordering on sacrilege!”
“I like it not either, Allazar. Come, to the south wall, in the hope of some kind of answer. I think I would have preferred the sight of a Blue Guard sticking his head over the parapet and yelling at us to bog off than this unbroken silence.”
But the south wall yielded no different result than any other. Three bells rung, six calls for sanctuary unanswered. And then finally all four of them were back where they’d started, though this time, dismounted, and standing on the cobbles some twenty yards from the central east gate.
Gawain chewed frak fresh-pared from a damp lump, and nodded towards the immense door. “How does it open, Allazar?”
“From the inside,” the wizard replied.
“No, you clod. Has the rain got through the shrubbery in your ears and damped the cloth you have for wits? In what manner does the gate or door open?”
“From the inside,” Allazar insisted. “There is an alcove cut into the wall where the machinery for opening the gate is found.”
Gawain sighed, and held the lump of frak between his teeth while he used his hands to gesticulate and indicate his meaning.
“Ahk iss,” he held up both hands side by side, little fingers touching, and then swung them apart like a pair of gates, “O ahk iss…” then repeated the gesture, opening his hands inwards, “O ahk…”
“Yes, apologies Longsword, I now understand the question.”
Gawain took the lump of frak from his mouth and pared another slice from it with his boot knife.
“The main gates are hinged at the bottom and drawn up by winches from within, much like a drawbridge of old. Ordinarily they repose flat upon the cobbles, creating a step up, though their edges are chamfered to facilitate easier entry or egress for heavy-laden wagons without the need for additional ramps.”
“Hmm. Then the arch is likewise chamfered to accommodate edges of the gate, and thus the portal seals flush with the walls when drawn up. Clever goits.”
“As I said, the cunning of humankind was considered in the design and architecture. A battering ram hammering on the gate would simply make the fit of the doorway tighter, like ramming a tapered plug into a tapered hole.”
“How about mystic battering rams, were they considered?”
“Longsword?”
Gawain shrugged. “You’ve tried ringing the bell. You’ve tried shouting. You haven’t tried pounding on the door with your stick and demanding entry under threat of loosing white fire upon them for the sacrilege of denying you entry.”
“I hardly think that my knocking on an oak portal thicker than my arms held wide will have any more success than my ringing of the bell or the uttering of the ancient plea for sanctuary.”
“Only one way to find out. We’ll stand back here in case someone appears up there and tries to drop something unpleasant on your head.”
“I almost wish they’d make the attempt,” Allazar sighed. “It would at least be an acknowledgement of our existence.”
“I know what you mean,”
Gawain agreed, grimacing up at the vacant ramparts. “I’m becoming rather annoyed at being ignored like this. Give it whack, Allazar, and if they don’t answer, give it a tree of lightning. Maybe that’ll draw their attention.”
Mumbling and shaking his head, Allazar strode towards the portal, the White Staff rapping on the cobbles as he went. He positioned himself at the exact centre of the arched door, and drew back the staff as if he were a pole-vaulter about to make a run. Instead, he thrust the staff forward to slam its base into the mighty oak.
There was a deafening boom, a bright flash, and Allazar was suddenly hurtling towards them through the air, arms and legs outstretched, staff clutched tightly in his right hand, and screaming in shock and surprise. He landed hard upon the smooth cobbles, and slid another foot or two on the rain-slick road.
“By the vakin Teeth!” Gawain gasped, and they rushed forward, fearing the worst.
But Allazar simply lay there, blinking in astonishment, gazing up at the three faces peering back down at him.
“Allazar?” Gawain demanded, “Are you hurt?”
“Surprised, rather,” the wizard croaked, and heaved himself up onto his elbows.
“Well then, get up off your lazy arse and knock again.”
“You don’t understand, Longsword, the gate is sealed.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll have Oggy standing here ready to catch you next time.”
“No, Longsword, you don’t understand!” Allazar gasped, heaving himself to his feet, “The gate has been held shut by mystic seal! From this side!”
Gawain blinked.
“From this side?” Ognorm asked, rubbing his chin. “What does that mean, then?”
“It means the gate has been locked from the outside, and then sealed by great mystic force, preventing entry from without!”
“Dwarfspit,” Gawain spat, “You mean there’s nobody home, and they locked up behind them when they left?”
Allazar gazed at the immense gate, and shook his head, the answer eluding him. “I do not know what I mean,” he whispered. “Only that someone has placed a seal upon the gate.”