Arghen turned away and in a few steps disappeared. Both Heather and I gasped. I had half-expected the Under-elf to kind of show up more in the darkness because he was an albino, but I was wrong.
“Under-elves have an affinity for shadows and darkness,” said Auraus, seeing the expression on our faces. “They may look white when there is light, but in the dark they become one with it. The ability to blend and attack from ambush is part of what makes them such feared warriors.”
“But the lichen provides some light. Also, I’ve been with Arghen at night before, and he’s never faded away before,” I argued.
“There is much light at night,” the Wind-rider reminded me. “The moon, the stars, fire–there is more illumination on the surface than you may realize than there is down below. And the lichen has a different sort of light, or so I am told. When there is only lichen to light the way, the Under-elves are unseen at a distance.”
“How do you know all this?”
She smiled, laughter in her grey eyes. “I grew up in Treestall among its population of Winged-elves, Wind-riders, Surface-elves, and Surface-Under-elves. I am also, ah, close to Dusk, who is half Surface-Under-elf himself, remember?”
“Arghen never mentioned this ability before,” I said grumpily. “He told me of the story of the Disjoin and what happened to the Under-elves. But he never said they disappeared in the dark.”
“That was not part of that story,” Auraus said. “It was sort of an after effect that came later. In any case, it is important to be aware that wherever it is dark underground, an Under-elf may be in the near distance. And it is always mostly dark in the tunnels.”
She shuddered at her own words, and I put a hand on her arm sympathetically. She squeezed my hand gratefully with her other one.
Arghen called out to us from further down the tunnel, “I have found the disarm switch, I believe. I will come back and test it.” The Under-elf returned to the area where the trap was, looked down, and said flatly, “Where are all the darts?”
We all looked at the floor. I blinked. There should have been dozens of bits of sharpened wood scattered about on the ground, but the area was clean.
“How did–no, wait–when did that happen, that we didn’t see it?” said Heather, mouth hanging open.
“By magic; and when we were not looking, though I felt something while the trap was going off,” I replied, trying not to look openly agog myself. “Why have that kind of magic here?”
“So no being would have to clean up after it,” Auraus guessed. “And if Bascom had a hand in making it, the trap likely magically resets as well, which means it never would need to be tended.”
Ragar growled, “And if magic cleans up the floor, then it probably cleans up any bodies left behind that fall victim to the trap.”
Heather and I gave identical shivers. Arghen took a deep breath and charged back across the trap area towards us since Auraus could not cross it to give him the shielding spell again. But whatever he had done on the other side must have worked, because the sharpened darts didn’t fly through the air at him.
He reached us and flashed us a white smile. “I think it is safe to go on,” he said to me.
“Perhaps I should use the iron now?” I said to no one in particular.
“No,” Arghen said. “Do not meddle with what needs it not.”
“In other words, ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it?’”
Heather gave me a half-smile while the others wore identical confused expressions.
I shook my head while quirking my lips. “Never mind. All right, everybody, let’s mount up and move out.”
As we kept our animals to a walk through the trap area, right in the middle of it Heather said, “Hey, there’s a small opening about the size of a door over to the right. Do any of you see it?”
We looked, but none of the rest of us saw anything.
“No, I don’t. Nice work, Heather!” I said.
“Would you show us, if you please?” added Arghen.
Heather got off her horse Mountie, went over to a small section of rock, and walked confidently into it. She disappeared from sight, and I got an idea.
“I’m going to use my iron against this illusion and see if it makes it go away, unless anyone objects.” I said. No one said anything, so I took out my bar. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the others stand well back. A little unnerved, I touched the iron to the ‘wall’. Nothing happened to the illusion.
“Oh well,” I shrugged as I sheathed it. “Guess iron only disrupts magic that is being formed, not after it has been put in place. Good to know for the future, anyway.”
Auraus said, “I will stay with the animals.”
Thanking Auraus, Arghen, Ragar and I followed after Heather and found ourselves in what had to be a conference room. There was a big ornate table with several richly upholstered chairs in red velvet on one side of the table, and a single matching chair on the opposite side.
Elaborate bronze floor candle sticks with white, sweet smelling candles in here were lit, one in each of the four corners of the square room. A black, thickly padded carpet covered the floor. On the large table was a pile of parchment, quill pens, and ink, as well as sand for drying wet ink and wax for sealing and stamping, though there were no seals or signet rings to be seen. A long table that matched the conference table was against the wall behind each set of chairs, which was flanked by two decorative chests.
Arghen nodded as he looked around. “I understand now. In the middle of neutral territory, each group would approach from their own side and deactivate the trap that both sides had had a hand in creating before negotiations could start. Mutual distrust. Very Under-elf in design.”
“If Bascom helped make this, I’m surprised there isn’t another pit trap somewhere,” Heather said.
“Heather? Do you see anything else here?” I asked.
She scanned around the room, and then she shook her head. Since there was nothing else to be gained here, we returned to Auraus.
I asked Arghen as we reached the mounts, “Do you think there might be more traps further along?”
Arghen replied, “Now that we have found this conference room, I feel sure of it. But I do not think there will be more than one more. I will scout ahead. Wait here.”
I made a face at him behind his back. There he goes again, taking command, I thought.
Almost as if he had heard my thought, Arghen turned around. “If that is what you wish me to do, Lise?”
I replied with a slight edge to my voice, “Yes, please, Arghen.”
The Under-elf disappeared in the darkness. Watching closer this time, I realized that he didn’t so much as disappear as fade away—and it was only at a distance. Up close to me, I still could see him clearly. But as soon as he got about ten feet away from the edge of the torch light, he started blending with the shadows. By twenty feet, it was impossible to tell where he had gone.
“Creepy,” Heather said.
I nodded, and we waited for him to return. About five minutes later we heard a snickt-clunk echo loudly back towards us from where Arghen had disappeared. Auraus, Heather Ragar and I exchanged looks. It seemed it had been a good thing that the Under-elf had gone ahead after all. Not long after the sound happened, Arghen returned.
“I am glad I went searching for more traps, Lise,” he said. “There was another further down the passageway, but I have now disabled it.”
“What was it?” Heather asked curiously.
Arghen shrugged. “I do not know. All I know is that I saw the signs of a trap switch, found it, and operated it. After riding a little forward to determine whether or not I had been successful, I came back to report on it.”
I frowned. “That was a bit risky, don’t you think? You should have waited for us. We could have done protection-wise what we did for the last trap.”
He nodded but didn’t say anything.
“Why would there be a safety release on this side of the trap, if it’s an Under-
elf trap?” Heather asked.
“In case an Under-elf delegation member needed to reset or de-set it in a hurry, I would say. The trap would not be left active behind them, so they would need to have more than one way of deactivating it if one of their number wished to leave before a set of negotiations were completed would be my guess,” he replied.
“Tricky,” said Ragar approvingly.
“Paranoid,” said Arghen.
“Can you blame them?” asked Auraus. “They are–were–dealing with Bascom.”
It was interesting to see that since Bascom’s death Auraus had been acting like a weight had been lifted off her shoulders. That was probably part of the reason why she agreed to come along to rescue Jason. I could understand how she felt. Knowing that a sadistic torturer to whom you had once been a prisoner was now dead would be a relief to anyone because it was a relief to me. After all, he had personally tried to kill me twice in the last several days.
The Under-elf smiled briefly at Auraus. “It is not just because of Bascom, my lady. It is just the Under-elf mentality.”
“So there is a difference between the Under-elves and the Elves up on the surface in more than just looks?” asked Heather. “How did that happen?”
“The whole story is somewhat long to relate now, but suffice it to say that what are now the Under-elves were once regular Surface-elves who felt abandoned and betrayed by the Gods and Goddesses when the Disjoin was created. Those Elves withdrew underground and cut off all communication with the surface, including worshiping any of the Divine,” he told her.
I added, “But it seems that some Under-elves are getting over that, though not in a nice way.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“They’ve kidnapped Jason and have taken other Surfacers prisoner, and we don’t know what their intentions are,” I replied. A thought struck me. “Hey, Arghen, I remember you telling me about what some Under-elves do to Surfacers. How do you know this?”
I had an idea about his knowledge and was almost afraid to have it confirmed, but now would be a good time to know if what I feared was true.
Arghen gave me a look that said to me he knew what I was thinking. “Lise, I have never taken part in any of the Under-elf excesses I have told you about. That being said, how could I not know about them? The Under-elves of my city-state did not go hunting for Surfacers. However, if Surfacers explored ways down to my city-state and were caught, they were considered fair game.”
“Fair game for what?” I pushed.
He sighed. “For whoever caught them. The Surfacers were usually brought in by the Duty Patrol. Remember me telling you that there are patrols whose only care was to keep the areas and travel tunnels cleared around each city-state from undesirables?”
I nodded.
“The Surfacers caught by a patrol were immediately brought in.”
“What happened then?”
“Two things: either the patrol would bring them to Central Court, which is in the center of a city-state, and sell them to the highest bidder to do so as the buyer wished; or the patrol could do the honors themselves.”
“Honors?” I asked.
“It was considered an honor to have proof that the patrol was doing their job of protecting the city-state. If that was the case, the unfortunate Surfacer or Surfacers would be taken to Central Court and displayed in whatever manner the Captain of the patrol wished. This is where the artistic creations that I have spoken of before comes from. Sometimes the Surfacers were killed first before their insides were displayed outside their bodies. Often that was not the case,” he replied with no emotion.
Heather turned green. I, having heard about this before, only had to swallow to prevent myself from throwing up in my mouth. Even with my pre-knowledge, it still wasn’t easy to listen to.
“Is that really going to be the Surfacers from the valley’s fate?” I asked a little weakly, images of Jason being pinned to a board like a butterfly flashing before my eyes.
“We do not know, Lise. Those Surfacers may simply have been meant as hostages against Bascom, with the Under-elves not knowing that the Surfacers would do them no good,” Arghen replied. “Or perhaps they were being taken below to have what I have already described done to them.”
“Possibly, but then where were the guards who were taken along with Jason from the road?” I asked. “I didn’t see any Miscere Giants or anything else that big there!”
“True,” said Arghen. “Perhaps we will find out that answer as we descend to the level of the Under-elves.”
“But what do we do about those others after we find Jason?”
“Those others?” Heather echoed.
“Well, yeah,” I said firmly. “If we’re going to the Sub-realms, we certainly can’t just go in and rescue only Jason. We have to rescue as many Surfacers as we can. And maybe those Miscere who used to work for Bascom and Morsca would be glad to be rescued, too. In fact, I’m pretty sure of it.”
“What?!” exclaimed Heather. “Are you nuts?” But before I could defend myself, she said, “Okay, yeah, I can see your point. If I was a prisoner down there and someone came from the surface to rescue someone nearby me and didn’t help me too, I’d be pretty pissed off. But Lise, rescuing everybody we can find is going to be impossible!”
“So we’ll rescue as many as we can,” I said. “We’ll free everyone who is in Jason’s vicinity, plus any we discover on the way out. But we won’t go scouring the whole city-state to find every last Surfacer, because then nobody would get away.”
I felt a little sad to know that I would be condemning some Surfacers to remaining prisoner, but I also knew that it couldn’t be helped. As a character in one of my fairy stories had said during my term paper research: “you cannot help everyone you meet; you can only do what you can.”
“So where do we go from here?” Heather asked.
“Where else but down?” I replied.
CHAPTER 7
After a quick discussion as we got ourselves ready to ride, Arghen and I agreed that he would go ahead on Stalker to keep a lookout for Under-elves. He would go ahead whatever distance he felt was appropriate, wait until we caught up to him, and then do it all over again. It was like a game of leapfrog, only on our mounts. Keeping to this pattern, we followed the travel tunnels for some unknown while. The downward grade of the tunnel was slight, but it was present. We lit the way for the horses with the magical torches we’d taken from the front of the cave and the keep, because the glowing lichen that lined the tunnel walls didn’t always provide enough illumination for them to see where to put their hooves. I noticed that once beyond the trap area thin threads of a white moss, which Arghen called air moss, started to appear alongside the lichen. Though white, the moss didn’t really help any with the amount of light.
But we could change that. We carried torches that were magical, so we could choose their illumination level. I told everyone to take one and make it glow just enough to light their mount’s feet—no need to advertise our presence too much. Arghen, of course, declined to take one, since his dranth was bred for this realm and didn’t need the light the way the horses did. And of course, neither did Arghen.
The tunnels were beautiful in their own way, but the different sameness of the colored glows as we rode between them made it seem like both all time and no time was passing. I’d never realized before just how much a slave I was to my cellphone, watch, or the sun to let me know what time it was. Not knowing whether it was sunset or sunrise made me feel ill at ease, so I sneaked a glance at the others to see if they were as bothered as I was. Arghen of course was fine with it, Ragar seemed to be okay, but Heather and Auraus looked as uneasy as I felt.
“Hey, Arghen? How do Under-elves keep time down here?” I asked.
He waved a hand in the direction of the walls. “The lichen periodically dims and brightens, so we measure time by that. The time it is brightest is called the Lightening; and when it is darkest, the Darkening. To mark the time in bet
ween we say ‘brightening’ or ‘dimming’ depending the state of the lichen’s luminescence cycle. If you will notice, the lichen now is not as bright as it was when we first entered the tunnels.”
I squinted but had to admit that I didn’t notice any particular change in illumination.
“Perhaps it is only because Under-elves are attuned to it,” said Auraus. “I do not notice it either, but then, we are traveling with torches. Perhaps that makes a difference as well.”
“How does lichen-time compare to time in the outside world?” Heather asked.
“I cannot say,” Arghen replied. “I have never had the occasion to compare the two. But I have noticed that on the Surface the length of time the sun is up is never the same, so perhaps there would be no correlation.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I have noticed that since I came to the Surface and met you, the light of the sun shines for a little longer each day.”
“Oh! That’s just the progression of the year–errr, the seasonal,” I interjected. “The light gets longer each day until the Summer Solstice, which is generally mid-June, and then shines a little less each day until the Winter Solstice. Then the cycle repeats itself.”
Arghen nodded. “It seems to me that the lichen always brightens and darkens in the same way in the same amount, so I do not think the two can be properly compared.”
“But there are still twenty-four hours in a day no matter how the light is divided out,” Heather argued. “Can’t you take a guess?”
Arghen shrugged. “As I said, I have never had the opportunity to compare the two, so I cannot.”
That ended that discussion.
One being who seemed just fine being underground was Stalker. He had almost skipped forward when the Under-elf first signaled to him to move out, if a large lizard-like creature could be said to skip. That had been the happiest that I’d seen the dranth, ever. It had been quite obvious he preferred being underground to being on the surface. Not surprising, really, since he’d been born in the Sub-realms. Or was that foaled? Or hatched, maybe? I asked Arghen about that when we caught up to him next.
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