The Mist Gate Crossings: Descent Into Underearth
Text Copyright © 2015 by Susan Bianculli
Cave Photo Copyright © Shutterstock.com/andreiuc88
Warriors with Spears Photo Copyright © Shutterstock.com/Petrafler
Warriors with Swords Photo Copyright © Shutterstock.com/Theo Malings
Angel Wings Photo Copyright © Shutterstock.com/Robert Adrian Hillman
Dranth Head Copyright © Shutterstock.com/MANSILIYA YURY
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First Electronic Edition 2015
ebook ISBN: 978-1-933767-46-8
Kindle ISBN: 978-1-933767-97-0
PDF ISBN: 978-1-933767-98-7
PROLOGUE
Up out of the depths of the unknowing darkness, the being struggled towards consciousness. Bit by bit he became aware that he was lying on his back on something flat and hard. At the same time he also discovered that every part of his body ached. He opened his eyes blearily and winced, the pain pounding in his skull a counterpoint to the aches in his large frame. What had happened?
He blinked a couple of times and eventually focused his eyes. By the dim light around him he could see there was a plain, roughhewn wooden ceiling not far above where he was. He turned his head carefully to the left, grimacing at the motion, and saw that he lay on a splintery wooden floor in the middle of bundled stacks of hay bales. He took a deep, agonizing breath in, and the smell of manure assaulted his nose as his ears registered the sounds of horses whickering and moving restlessly somewhere below. Stables. He was in the stables. Confusion filled him—how was it possible that he had gotten here?
He tried to sit up, hissed from the sudden increase in agony all over, and fell back down. He examined his body through the—tattered?—clothes he wore to find out why. Probing gently with his thick fingers in the rents of the material, he discovered wounds and burns all over his skin. He bared his teeth in a silent snarl as memory started to come back. Battle. He had been in a fight. In a fight for his very life. Had he won? He must have, or he would not be alive right now. He had to have somehow crawled up here to recuperate after it was over and gone to sleep—or gone unconscious. And from the shape his body was in, it was very lucky that he had woken up again. But why had he picked here? Had his brain been temporarily addled?
Help. He needed to get up and seek help. And then he needed to find out what had happened.
CHAPTER 1
The morning after the surrender of Morsca’s and Bascom’s slavers’ keep, the sun rose in pinks and reds over the mountains that surrounded the pretty, tear-drop-shaped farming valley where the once-impressive stone building was located. The cloudless late spring sky seemed to promise a beautiful warm day as I watched the sunrise from the window of the bedroom that I and my friends had slept in last night.
I wish Jason could be here to see this with me, I thought to myself. I’m sure it would remind him of the Catskill Mountains back home.
But Jason couldn’t see it with me because he had been kidnapped by the malevolent Under-elves of the Sub-realms who had worked with Bascom and Morsca, and he was being carried away further and further from me every minute. Our friends and I had no way as of yet for rescuing him. We didn’t know how to get underground after them since the Under-elves had collapsed their escape route and shut us out. I sighed heavily and leaned my head on the stone ledge, depressed by my thoughts.
The noises of things being banged about, mixed with the low murmurs of voices, rose from the half-ruined courtyard below and attracted my attention. Figuring it was the cooks getting breakfast ready, I tried to lean out the window to see what they were serving. I was stopped by thin air.
“You still cannot lean out a window?” inquired Auraus sleepily from her bed behind me. The priestess of the goddess Caelestis, and my closest female friend in this world since I had helped rescue her from this very keep, stretched her muscles out one by one where she lay.
I shrugged. “Nope. Apparently not.”
The beautiful, golden haired Wind-rider frowned. “We need to find and break whatever item Bascom bound to the curse affecting you. This is ridiculous.”
“No argument there,” I grinned at her. “Pity he left no directions on how to do it, though.”
As I dressed, the little voice in the back of my head, the one from home, made a wish for pancakes, hot syrup and orange juice to be among the breakfast offerings. But since I’d not seen any of those since arriving in this world, I guessed it would be a futile wish. The chainmail that proclaimed my status as a Champion of Caelestis was the last thing I slid on before I headed down to eat. After we’d had breakfast served in the outdoor kitchen of the courtyard, Dusk, my adviser and the leader of the Grey Riders in yesterday’s war against the keep and who was also a recently liberated prisoner himself, kept his previously made promise to me.
“I need some volunteers,” he announced to the Grey Riders milling about. “For my friend Lise and those who are to accompany her, an entrance to the Sub-realm needs to be found so a rescue of our friend and companion Jason can be made. We are relatively sure that one exists not too far distant from this location.”
Auraus added with a smile, “I will be flying overhead in a wide spiral loop around the area, so that whomever finds the entrance can signal me to come and make a map. I then, of course, will let all you other searchers know to leave off looking.”
“Who would be willing to assist?” Dusk finished.
I was relieved when quite a few of them agreed. I watched from the sidelines as the handsome, amber-eyed Surface-elf laid out a search pattern for them to follow using a map that the mountain-cat-elf Ragar, a friend and yet another individual also freed recently from this keep, had taken from a little room off the audience chamber yesterday.
As soon as Auraus and the search party had left, a fancily dressed Goblin and a Troll came up to Dusk.
“Leader Dusk, can we have a moment of your time?” they asked in unison, and then they turned and glared at each other.
I saw Dusk heave a sigh as he turned and led them out of the courtyard to where he’d set up an office of sorts. I knew that Dusk had wanted to join the search, but it seemed he was the only person whom the valley leaders trusted to mediate their inevitable clashes. So, he couldn’t go. The half Surface-elf/half Under-elf was being kept busy trying to set up a working council that would govern the valley after he left. The Grey Riders who hadn’t gone out with their fellows to search were staying to assist Dusk by being his eyes, ears, and lieutenants. They all wanted to get the valley into some sort of shape as soon as possible so they could finally go back to their varied homes, and I could appreciate that. I wanted that, too.
After the cooks cleared the kitchen away, the sounds of re-construction starting up again filled the morning air outside the keep’s cracked courtyard. Inside its perimeter I paced in ever-growing circles, too impatient and nervous to sit.
“Ugh! I can’t stand this waiting! We’ve got to get going after Jason ASAP!” I said to no one in particular, pausing briefly to stomp a foot on the flagstones and run my fingers through my loose blonde hair. “There’s a million ways Jason could be killed by his kidnappers: he could die from their clumsiness with him since he’s a human and they won’t know how to deal with one, he could get sick from an infection creeping into his broken leg, or he could be crushed in a cavern collapse l
ike the one that cut him off from us!”
My three companions sitting around the courtyard replied only with silence.
I harrumphed and resumed my pacing. My biggest worry I kept to myself, though. Another mist gate, which could take Jason, Heather and me back to New York City, could open while he’s still missing. Because they’re unpredictable. If we miss that one, that’s it for us.
Anxiety about that kept me on my feet and feeling edgy. Caelestis, the goddess I worshipped in this world, had told me that things generally happened in threes. So far I’d missed two mist gates: the one that had brought me here in the first place, which I hadn’t been able to go back through due to divine intervention; and the one that had just brought over Heather Chung, my rival from Crosstown Fencing Academy. My goddess had kept Heather’s entrance open for me as she had promised me she would, but I had declined to use it because Jason had already been abducted at that point, and he had to be saved first. We needed to find him and fast. It could be as long as a year before a gate occurred next, or it could happen in the next ten minutes.
My internal worries, chasing each other over and over to the beat of my feet, took me on a path past Ragar. He, for a wonder, was sitting still in the morning sun on part of a crumbled wall. I think he felt calm as he soaked up the heat, if I interpreted the look on his fuzzy cat-face the right way. It wasn’t an expression I was used to seeing on him. If I had to guess why, though, then I would say that the exploding of Bascom in the last fight yesterday was the cause of Ragar’s present good humor.
“Peace, Lise,” he growled gently at me. “The searchers will be successful eventually.”
I shot a look at him but continued walking.
Not far from him sat Heather, who was much happier this morning since she’d been able to take a long bath last night in one of the keep’s bathing rooms. For form’s sake she’d bemoaned the lack of showers, but it seemed like her complaining had been more out of habit than anything else. Though Ragar didn’t see it, I caught her throwing a furtive glance at him. I’d’ve bet a dollar that if she’d thought she could have gotten away with it, she’d have lain down with her head in the tan-and-black-furred mountain-cat-elf’s lap. Her fascination with him made me believe once again that Heather was a secret ThunderCats fan.
“Lise, chill,” she said to me as I passed, cleaning under her fingernails with the tip of her knife. “Walking a hole in the paving stones isn’t going to make the time go any faster.”
I stopped and sighed. “I know, Heather. But even so, I can’t sit still. I’m too antsy. I wanna get going after Jason!”
I looked away from her. I knew I should tell her that we might have a problem regarding the mist gates and going back to New York, but as she seemed content for the first time since accidentally coming here, I didn’t want to spoil it. There would be plenty of opportunities for me to tell her about our situation after we got underway.
“You should conserve your strength, Lise,” Arghen, my first mentor and guide in this world, chided me from the shadows of the wall. He leaned over his war spear laying crosswise on a stone, sharpening it. “It will likely be a long wait.”
The noble-looking, pale-skinned Under-elf who’d renounced the Sub-realms and had become a Champion of the goddess Quiris, had wanted to go on the search because he’d thought he’d have a better idea of what to look for. I’d vetoed it because I’d felt that it was better for him to stay with us. That way we wouldn’t have to wait for him to get back from wherever it was he would have been when Auraus returned, and we would be able to leave right away with her map. I was glad when Arghen had only given a half shrug and hadn’t argued with my reasoning. I knew he was right about saving my strength, though, so I sat down abruptly on a broken stone block. A couple of minutes later, though, I was up on my feet again. I couldn’t help it.
“I’m, uh, I’m just going to go check on the mounts,” I said. “I want to make sure that they’re ready to go at a moment’s notice.”
Without stopping for replies or to see the eye roll that Heather was probably making at me, I headed outside to the side yard where our various riding animals and their gear had been penned awaiting Auraus’ return. Hanging out without something to do had always been the hardest part for me. I felt much better doing something than just sitting around. Even when waiting for a bus back home in New York, I would play on my cell phone or read a book or practice my fencing footwork, if not the sword swings.
I really wasn’t concerned about someone messing with our travel gear, because the deadly-to-everyone-except-humans iron bars that I had found and brought up from the dungeon for Heather, Jason and me insured that, but I needed to keep myself occupied. I opened the corral gate and stepped inside onto the packed dirt beside the saddlebags. Closing the entrance behind me, I moved aside the iron bars and crouched down to re-check through all the packs. Out of the blue I was nearly knocked off my feet by a blow from behind.
“Ooof,” I said as I turned with a smile for Saffron, my golden horse given to me by Caelestis. It was he who’d nearly nudged me over. “I’m glad to see you, too, but could you be a little gentler next time?”
Mountie, the little brown mountain horse we’d picked up on our travels who was now Heather’s horse, also came over to give me a friendly prod. I stood up and stroked each of their velvet noses, then ran my fingers through their manes. Stalker, Arghen’s green and black dranth, stood stoically off to the side with his lizard eyes half closed. I pushed past my equine groupies and went over to put on his face the eye shades which had been made for him to help bear the light of the sun. I felt rewarded when I saw his forked tongue flick out of his mouth briefly as he relaxed. Melka and Starr, two black-haired horses that had been picked out as strong enough to carry Ragar and Auraus, came over more out of curiosity and to be stroked than because they knew me, though it was kind of comical to see how they avoided Stalker. I patted their noses, too.
It had been something of a shock to everyone when Auraus had said before leaving on her part of the search pattern that she was going to come and rescue Jason with us. She’d left no room for argument against it by flying away on her part of the initial search. I’d looked at Dusk, who’d smiled with pride at her shrinking figure as she flew away.
“Should I be concerned?” I’d asked him. “I mean, I’m glad that she’s coming because she’s my friend and knows more about healing than I do, plus having her for spell casting is an added bonus, but …”
Dusk had completed my thought, “But she, and her people in general, do not do so well in enclosed spaces where they cannot fly. And you are afraid she might be a hindrance. Is that what you are worried about?”
I’d nodded yes, too shame-faced to say it out loud myself.
Dusk had turned then and given me a more serious look. “One thing a leader does is to encourage people to spread their wings. An apropos thing to say in this case, is it not?”
He’d had a point. “Well,” I’d said slowly, “if she thought she couldn’t handle it, then she wouldn’t have volunteered, right?”
Dusk had smiled at me then, and I’d known that things would probably be okay.
That, of course, had meant Auraus needed a horse like the mountain-cat-elf did, because Arghen had told us that the travel tunnels linking the underground city-states that were home to the Under-elves were tall enough for riders but not for flyers, excepting for the occasional cavern. Dusk had gone after Auraus was out of sight and handled the arrangements for the general provisioning of her and Ragar. With Arghen, Heather and I having been taken care supply-wise by the goddesses Caelestis and Quiris, Arghen’s goddess, we were ready to hit the road. I was probably more ready than any of them, because I wanted Jason back for more personal reasons than just friendship.
Still feeling restless, I closed up the saddlebags and replaced the iron bars across their tops and decided to go check out the stables where Melka and Starr had come from. I was curious to see the kind of care that the other
animals that hadn’t been chosen for us had been given in the past. Giving one last pat to Saffron, I exited the corral.
The smell of horse manure grew stronger as I walked towards the stables along the side of the keep. The area was made up of several buildings surrounding a large horse exercise area, because no one place could be big enough to house all the horses a keep would need. Not unless you wanted a stable half the size as the bottom floor of the keep itself, that is, and I didn’t think Morsca had been the type to have any one building nearby that was as big as her own place. I nodded pleasantly to the various races of beings at work cleaning up the debris, repairing walls and troughs, and doing other maintenance work so that the horses would be free to come outside again soon.
I entered the first stable I saw and checked into random stalls. I was relieved to see that the animals there were all in good shape. It seemed that someone at least had been caring for the horses properly for as long as the animals had been here: their coats were good, no ribs were showing, and their hooves looked sound. It was shadowy in here, and cool, and felt like home—or at least like the 4-H riding camp barns where I’d spent my summers since I was eight. My eyes misted a little. Blinking rapidly, I picked up a curry comb from a nearby shelf and started currying the large brown horse in the last stall I checked, more out of habit and to keep busy than anything else. I knew no horse would turn down a good currying, and I’d had years of experience of doing it.
“Who’s a good horse?” I cooed as I ran the comb repeatedly down her neck.
The mare whickered and curved her neck in appreciation, giving me as much area to work on as she could, and she had a lot. As I curried her, I heard a thump overhead where the hay bales for the horses were stored. That made me pause, because I was pretty sure I’d passed all the grooms for the stables that were working outside.
I called up, “Who’s there?”
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