Descent Into Underearth

by Susan Bianculli

  “I, uh, hope that blood isn’t all mine,” I said with a weak smile, brushing at some of the dried flakes on the flexible metal.

  “You didn’t die!” Heather said happily and crushed me in a hug.

  As if that were a signal, I was buried in a sea of comforting arms. It felt wonderful.

  “Enough!” commanded Auraus after a few moments. “Let me examine her!”

  Everyone backed up a little, and Auraus came in close to look me over from head to toe. When she was done, she sat back on her heels.

  “I am very surprised that my spell worked so well. It was my strongest healing left, but still it should not have accomplished this. However, I have no argument with the outcome.”

  “I can tell you why,” I said.

  Four pairs of puzzled eyes met mine.

  “Actually, Heather, I did die—although not quite all the way, it seems.” Glancing around to include everyone else, I continued, “After the sword hit me in the neck, I woke up in what seems to pass for Purgatory on this side of the mist gate, Heather, although here it’s called the Place of Soul’s Election.”

  Auraus’ and Ragar’s eyes grew round, Arghen looked interested, and Heather’s face grew more puzzled. Quickly I told everyone what had happened to me in the white nowhere place with the mirrors. Heather gave out a long, drawn out whistle when I was done.

  “Wow. Heaven? It’s real over here?”

  “And apparently it’s real where we come from too,” I said. “So that’s something.”

  “We should tell everyone about it when we get back!” she said enthusiastically. “You can get it on the news and do talk shows.”

  I interrupted her. “I won’t be believed. I’ve heard about other people dying and seeing a white light surrounding them, and when they came back, those stories were usually met with skepticism at best. No thanks. I’m not going that route. I know it exists for myself, and now I’ve told you about it, and that’s good enough for me.”

  Heather pouted a little as Ragar asked, “Let us go back a moment. What did you mean when you said you could tell us about Auraus’ spell?”

  “Before I was pulled back, I asked Caelestis a couple of questions,” I said.

  “What did you ask?” Auraus wanted to know, curiosity burning in her voice.

  “One: why did your light spell blow up, two: what happened after I died, and three: if Jason was okay.”

  “And?”

  “The light spell blew up because magic messes up big time around iron and because we’re inside iron ore down here.”

  Everybody except Heather shuddered.

  “Are the walls safe to touch?” wondered Ragar.

  “The iron is probably buried under a layer of rock. The Under-elves of Chirasniv would have made the travel tunnel safe for them to traverse,” Arghen said reasonably.

  “And since they don’t have magic, there would be no chaotic effects for them to have to worry about,” added Auraus thoughtfully.

  I looked at Arghen with a small grin. “So, just for the record, I was using my iron bar in that fight. Guess it didn’t work out as well as we had hoped.” Turning to Auraus, I asked her, “Is every spell that you cast going to be out of control down here? Because if it is, you should probably hold off on using magic unless it’s absolutely necessary.”

  “No, not every spell is blown out of proportion. After I accidentally caused the ceiling to collapse ….” She fell silent and lowered her grey eyes.

  I remembered I’d heard her screaming. If she’d been trapped under rubble, that would explain the hysterical note I’d heard in her voice since Wind-riders had trouble dealing with confinement.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “I trapped myself when the ceiling came down,” she said in a small voice.

  I nodded at the confirmation of my thought as Arghen put an arm around her in a one-armed hug.

  “Do not dwell on it, my lady,” he comforted her. “You were not trapped for long, and we were able to free you in time to save Lise.”

  She inhaled a big breath and raised her chin, putting on a show of confidence like she was putting on armor. As she inflated, I deflated at Arghen’s words. Had I really been that far gone?

  Heather must have seen the look on my face because she said, “Your breathing was getting pretty ragged towards the end there, Lise. We were worried. Auraus tried a couple of different healing spells and salves and stuff, but none of them worked. Until the last spell she tried, and then it was like boom—Hello!”

  Ah, I thought. That explains the hard tingle I felt going through the mirror. It was Auraus’ spell pulling me back.

  Heather then said wistfully, “I wish magic could work on me like that. Heck, I just wish magic would work on me at all.”

  “Careful,” I said with a smile. “That’s how it starts—with wishing. ‘Form follows thought’ is a saying in a couple of different world religions, you know.”

  “No, I didn’t know that. Really?”

  “That’s kind of the definition of magic, really. You wish for something, put some energy into it, and it happens to one degree or another. Actually, I suppose that definition works for prayer, too. It may work better over here, but it also works back home.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Ever hear of a baseball pitcher imagining himself pitching the perfect game over and over, and then later he does really great on the mound?”

  She nodded.

  “Some experts agree that a lot of what makes physical skills better than usual is how much mental effort you put into it. I spent a lot of time reading about fairytales and imagining what it would be like if they came true. And when they did, by me falling through that mist gate, I guess I was already primed to have magic work on me. You’ve thought about geek stuff a little, obviously, but I’ll bet you’ve never really thought about magic and fairytales and stuff too much, have you?” I couldn’t help but slide my eyes towards Ragar as I spoke, and Heather blushed. I found it telling that she didn’t reply. “Anyway, the fact that you can see through illusions and are kind of impervious to magic being cast on you is nothing to sneeze at over here, you know. You’ve been pretty instrumental since you got here.”

  Heather blushed a little harder, and I could tell that she was pleased.

  “This is all very fascinating,” said Ragar impatiently, “but we have spent long enough here. We should move on. That cave-in will surely alert people from Chirasniv to come and investigate.”

  Arghen nodded confirmation of Ragar’s words.

  “We have guard uniforms now, or at least a couple, don’t we?” I asked.

  The Under-elf confirmed that we did.

  “Then let’s sneak in as guards. It’ll be quicker than waiting for a merchant caravan that may or may not come. Ragar and Auraus, you’ll stay with us until we reach the last nexus point that Arghen is fairly certain exists before the city gates. You two will stay there while Arghen, Heather, and I sneak in to find Jason.”

  “It’s just as well we’re splitting up,” said Heather. “The horses would stand out inside the Under-elf city, wouldn’t they, and they can’t hang around outside it by themselves.”

  I looked at her, shaking my head at myself for missing that bit of obviousness. “Good point, Heather. I hadn’t even thought of that.”

  “Do not worry, Lise,” Auraus reassured me, relief evident in her voice that she wasn’t going into the city-state. “I will be able to take care of our mounts and make sure they do not make any sounds to give us away.”

  “You’re not going to use magic, right?” I asked her with an edge to my voice.

  “No,” she smiled. “Just regular skills and methods taught to me by my mentors.”

  We all scrounged enough pieces of uniforms and equipment from the dead Under-elves and the two dead dranth we found to make most of two ill-fitting suits for Heather and myself. I could see Heather was squeamish about the process and remembered when I, too, had felt that way
about taking what we needed from dead bodies. But she sucked it up much quicker than I had. We found that some of the armor was dented in places which was kind of uncomfortable, but that just made it all the more believable to explain the missing dranth, which was long since gone.

  “Will the dranth return to the city gates, like cows and horses return to their barns eventually?” I asked Arghen.

  He said, “They are trained to do that. But with one dranth returning and the three of us entering without the correct number of dranth, it is to be hoped that the gate guards will make incorrect assumptions.”

  While Heather, Arghen and I pulled the disguises together and applied the skin whitener that Arghen provided, Auraus did the Rite of the Dead for the Under-elves. We were all surprised when after their souls coalesced above the bodies, they didn’t arrow away into some unknown direction. Instead, they started to fade out of sight as they floated off into the cave walls. The bodies left behind also did not collapse into ashes.

  “Why?” Auraus started to say, but Arghen interrupted her.

  “Remember, my lady,” he said, “that these Under-elves do not choose to believe in the Gods. Therefore, their souls have no place to go when their bodies die.”

  “So they turn into ghosts?” gasped Heather.

  “It’s no different back home, you know,” I said wryly. “Lots of people believe that once you’re dead there, there’s no heaven or hell, or Paradise or Gehanna, or whatever, afterwards. Maybe those who don’t want to believe in anything even after they die just become ghosts or something. There’s certainly enough stories of spooks-n-stuff that have come down through the ages.”

  Heather blinked. “Oh, yeah. I even know a couple of atheists. I guess I never really thought about it.” She looked a little sad as she said that.

  I looked at Arghen. “So, I’m guessing that means there’s lots of ghosts down here?”

  Arghen shrugged, then nodded, and then shrugged again. “It is hard to say. We are told there are, but I am no Conductivus. I walk without the knowing, just like most other Under-elves do.”

  The rest of us looked at each other in confusion.

  Arghen, seeing that, explained. “A Conductivus is that rare Under-elf who has congress with the souls of the departed. He or she is revered but is set apart from Under-elf society. No laws or rules apply to such a one. In fact the Conductivus, by being set apart from Under-elven society, can end up being the ultimate arbiter of Under-elven law if requested. But his or her main function is interacting with the souls of the dead and sometimes speaking or acting on their behalf.”

  “How is it that I have never before heard of such a thing?” asked Auraus—a little petulantly, I thought.

  “They are so rare that there may be only one in ten thousand, and not every city-state has even one. And as they are non-violent by nature, I would guess that their existence had never needed to be a topic of conversation before.”

  “Does Chirasniv have one?” Heather asked.

  “I do not know, but it is possible,” he replied.

  Uh-oh. If there was a Conductivus in Chirasniv, would these two ghosts go and complain to him or her, and get the Conductivus to perform some act on their behalf against us? I wondered.

  “We’d better get a move on,” I said out loud, nervously.

  We all did the best we could to hide the bodies under rock cairns from the now plentiful rocks lying about the cavern away from the actual avalanche, and then I looked Heather and myself up and down one last time. Our skin was now as white as Arghen’s, our lack of Elven ears was hidden under bandages—which hopefully suggested we’d been hurt in the cave-in, the metal plated armor was on and dirtied, and we now carried Under-elf weapons. Heather and I kept our own modified sheathes, though; neither of us wanted to part with our iron bars. And Arghen’s Quiris symbols could be taken as personal decoration, so we left them alone.

  “All right, its good enough, I guess,” I said. “Let’s go find Jason.”

  CHAPTER 14

  We headed back into the tunnel that Arghen and Ragar said led towards the city-state of Chirasniv. We were able to dodge, by heading into a tunnel that led nowhere, a pair of Under-elf scouts who probably were off to investigate the cavern collapse. That made us hurry onward perhaps more than we should have once they were out of Elven hearing, but we knew we had a time limit on finding our way in to the city-state because those Under-elves would soon be coming back. Jason’s trail led us through three caverns, and in the third one Arghen stopped at one of the tunnels he inspected.

  “This place is the one that Ragar and Auraus should wait in, Lise. See those symbols?” he said, pointing to scratches on either side of the tunnel mouth.

  I came over and looked. They did look a little different than the others we’d been seeing.

  “I believe those indicate the city gates are at the end of this tunnel,” he said.

  “All right then, everybody dismount,” I ordered as we turned the animals over to Auraus and Ragar.

  “I have been thinking about those two guards we passed. I feel that Auraus and I should be able to take care of them so they will not return to the city-state before you come back with Jason,” Ragar said.

  “I’m not sure about that,” I said. “As long as you stay hidden, it shouldn’t be necessary.”

  Arghen said, “I agree with Lise. If more guards do not return from a trip to the collapse, someone in charge may get suspicious. Leave them be unless you have absolutely no choice.”

  Ragar’s face turned sulky as he and Auraus disappeared with the mounts.

  “Arghen, this is where you are going to have to take over, since you know more about the Sub-realms than anybody else here,” I said with some reluctance to the Under-elf.

  He nodded gravely, but surprisingly he said, “I will share the lead with you where I can, Lise, if you will accept that?”

  I blinked, and stammered out, “Uh, sure. Okay.” He waited politely as I thought a moment. I asked him, “So, Arghen, can Stalker carry three to the city-state gate?”

  “Since it cannot be that far, the answer is ‘yes’,” he replied with a smile, apparently seeing where I was going to go. “However, I would suggest that he remain with the horses. Once in the military pens, he would eventually have to have a stall to go into. And as there is none for him, his addition to the pack of dranth would bring up questions and cause alarms.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Then perhaps we should just walk in and blame the ceiling collapse on why we are walking.”

  Turning over Stalker as well to Auraus and Ragar, Arghen, Heather, and I headed down the tunnel and eventually ended up at a pair of two-story tall gates. The gates stood open, probably because of the Under-elves that had left. Arghen casually waved to the gate guard and asked after the missing dranth. He acted relieved when he was told that it had already returned and was being treated in the dranth care facility. Arghen started to enter the gate, but he was stopped by the guard’s lowered spear. My heart stopped, too.

  Thankfully, all the gate guard wanted was to know what had happened. Arghen was silent a moment, and then assumed a haughty expression and told the gate guard off for asking for information above his station. I drew in a sharp breath and mentally prepared myself for a surprise fight, but the Under-elf just muttered an apology and stepped back, freeing us to move on. I surreptitiously patted my makeup dry from the fear-induced sweat as we passed through the tall, heavy doors.

  We entered a huge cavern. The first thing I noticed was that the air in here was fresher-smelling than the rather stale air of the travel tunnels, and then I saw why. The air moss flourished in thick, almost decorative patches on the walls up to the cavern ceiling here, and the luminescent lichen grew in-between the patches. The second thing I noticed was that there were no stalactites or stalagmites that I could see. Arghen whispered to Heather and me that all the cavern ceilings and floors were kept in immaculate condition to ensure that no Under-elf died as a result of falling
rocks.

  As we traveled towards the center of the cavern where the military training areas were, I saw towering columns wrapped about with glowing lichen surrounding each area and providing pockets of illumination. It made sense; there were no walls in the center, so there was no natural light. Since even the Under-elves needed a little light to operate by, the lamp columns, as Heather promptly dubbed them, solved the problem. We passed large corrals where dranth were being put through battle training, and open areas of plain, smoothed rock where rows of grimly concentrating Under-elves performed military drills. It was eerie to hear the Under-elves practicing before we could see them. Beyond them, we saw pocket stalls without roofs where dranths slept with their riders.

  “You sleep with your animals?” I murmured to Arghen as we walked by an entire open air barn where Under-elf after Under-elf just barely seen slept against or beside his or her mount.

  I wasn’t afraid of being overheard because the cavern was alive with sound—the complaints of the working dranth, the ‘hai’s’ of the drilling forces, and the loud commands of the trainers covered casual whispers.

  “Yes,” he replied as softly. “It builds a bond between dranth and rider from hatching, and keeps the bond strong as the dranth matures. Also, a riding force can be mounted almost immediately should it be necessary because the dranth corps sleeps in shifts.”

  Ah. I wondered how long it would take the Under-elves to conquer our world if they ever managed to cross over, and after recalling everything Arghen had ever said, and the things I had seen for myself, I decided that the human race would be doomed should that happen despite the iron that laced Human society.

  As I was thinking this, Arghen said softly, “Now, with a military bearing and step, make for the tunnel entrance.”