The Ashen Levels

by C F Welburn

  Still having seen no sign of activity, they passed swiftly through, onto a balcony overlooking a wide chamber. The roof yawned upwards in a huge funnel, and at its top, a precise circle of star-studded sky. Peering down revealed a dizzying reflection of that which wheeled above. A surface so flat and smooth it could only be water. But there was no single ripple in its vast, glassy surface, and every infinitesimal stab of starlight was marked as though on canvas. The specks stretched down into cold, bottomless depths, fallen from unfathomable heights.

  A landing, set into the rock so as not to impede upon the astral lake, wound its way around the chamber.

  Beneath the glittering web they ran, scuttling like spiders in silken shadows. They had almost made it, when things went awry.

  Later, they deemed it a pebble jarred loose from some shoe, or maybe a piece of dried mud; something inconsequential. Yet whatever it was that fell—however minuscule—hit the lake like a meteor.

  The white lights glared and waned, swished and sloshed, blurred and then blazed, and from somewhere below rose a terrible, piercing cry. It degenerated to an agonised gurgle and ended in trembling, wretched sobs.

  They skidded to a halt.

  “That sounded ominous,” Ginike said, peering over the edge. The source of that bitter wail could not be determined, but they beheld the surface lapping and clashing, a staccato of lights. They had no time to deliberate, for just then a torch rushed into view further along the passageway. Then another, and several from behind.

  They were trapped.

  The largatyn moved with ferocity, led by Zyrath, larger still, now out of his throne. His face quivered with fury; his eyes, windows on the ire that smouldered within. He roared in so guttural and heated a fashion that they would have struggled to comprehend even had it been in their tongue.

  “Ashen!” Zyrath spat the word as though his mouth were full of bile. “You’ve defiled Iylleth!”

  “Defiled?” Balagir defended. “We were held prisoner without reason. We merely wish to be on our way!”

  “That will never happen. Not now.”

  “Is this anything to do with that scream?” Ginike hedged grimly.

  “Rahhh!” was as much eloquence as Zyrath could muster in that instant. He had to be restrained by three of his entourage from dealing Ginike a swipe that would have seen his head make one full turn. Another largatyn, no less irate but slightly more coherent, clarified: “You should not have come here. By disturbing the space-water, you’re condemned. Not even your ghosts will leave this place.”

  “It’s mere reflection. Why not look up and behold the heavens firsthand?” Balagir reasoned.

  “Insolence!” Zyrath barked.

  “The Gazer is undone,” the other spoke, his voice breaking as he heard himself say those very words. “She will die, but your sufferance will be greater.”

  “Gazer?”

  “She below. She who gave her life; a century to count those stars, and was almost done.”

  “She was… counting the stars?” Balagir raised an eyebrow.

  “She would have been young once more; immortal. But you’ve doomed her. Doomed all who have waited so long. Now she must fade, frail and spent.”

  “If the lake was so sacred, why not guard it better?”

  “It was guarded. You were under lock. We would ask how you defied us, how you released the chains, but it matters not. Now, choose your champion.”

  “Champion?”

  His lip curled. “Were it up to me, you’d all die now. Zyrath? He’d have you frozen until your spirits were sculptures to chisel in endless torment. Alas, the lore: Galvia, Gazer of Iylleth, mother of largatyn.” Several of the largatyn bowed their heads. Not Zyrath. He simmered like a lidded pot.

  “I suspect this champion of ours must match one of your own. Who might that be, out of curiosity?”

  “I,” Zyrath hissed through a string of spittle.

  “And if we win?”

  “You won’t.”

  “None of this unfortunate business would have befallen had we been acquainted with this lore.”

  “When your champion dies, your souls will freeze.”

  “And the champion escapes such a fate?”

  “Their skin will line the boat of their bones and deliver a new Gazer to the shore.”

  “I’m glad we’ve cleared that up.”

  “Now, elect. We must fight ere the water grows still.”

  Balagir looked at his companions but was spared the agony of choice when Toral stepped forward, black eyes shining keenly.

  “I’ve eaten the tails of larger lizards,” he snarled.

  Zyrath shrugged, indifferent to the challenger, just eager to finish it. Balagir was caught between relief and uncertainty. For all Toral’s malice, he was a stranger. Being a black-eye did not make one a skilled fighter; trickery and circumstance went a long way.

  “Freya?” he asked, the whole group looking to him. Despite having travelled with the ashen, she shook her head uncertainly. In light of Zyrath’s bulk and wrath, it was unlikely any of them could best him; at least Toral was prepared to do so with the shield of misguided confidence. Balagir looked at Kiela, then at Ginike and Garill. Jerikin simply shrugged as if none of this were any of his business and he had walked in on an unpleasant conversation.

  Solemnly, he gave Toral a nod, and things transpired without ceremony.

  Zyrath sprang as though all the rage he had been constraining had coiled in his tail. He came down on Toral like a fallen horse, knocking the black-eye on his back. The lizard lord reared to howl at the stars. Toral managed to get to one knee, when the huge largatyn planted a black talon through the side of his neck. He slid free and shuffled backwards, clasping the flow that left a bloody trail. He raised his hand in dripping red supplication; Zyrath removed it with a blue blade. The black-eye gawped at the empty sleeve where his hand had always been. Zyrath swung three more times, and it was only when Toral was limbless that his eyes widened in realisation. He let out a long wail, died, and polluted the air with a smoke that rushed into the ashen. Zyrath wheeled on them.

  There was no time for hesitation; the lizard lord moved with a bloodlust that defied physics, and his brethren crowded them from behind.

  “Jump!” Balagir roared, grabbing Kiela’s elbow and propelling them both from the balcony.

  The fall was long, and blackness took an eternity to reach them. The air that rushed in his ears was the sole sound, and breath caught in throats. Then came the icy blackness, the sucking of air, the irrelevance of direction.

  He sank like a stone, down through the lights of lost time. Centuries became seconds; millennia, minutes; images flickered, both vivid and surreal; lights, codes, cables, screens… And then he was free, bursting from the surface, gasping, shivering from the journey of eons more than from cold. Kiela stared blankly at his side, lost in worlds long extinct or perhaps yet unborn, whose memories or auguries were trapped in tendrils of light in the deep, black pool.

  Ginike burst free next, followed by Freya, Garill, and Jerikin.

  “I think I would have preferred to die,” the lych spluttered. Balagir shook confusion clear and glanced to where voices hissed above.

  “They won’t jump,” he said. “The pool is too sacred.”

  “There,” Freya gasped. “Lights on the shore. It must be a way out.” Wordlessly they kicked and splashed towards the edge, knowing that even now the largatyn would be moving to cut them off.

  The surface bobbed and reflected light as though they swam not in an underground lake, but through the night sky itself. The light stretched, deceiving the eye and defying logic. Ginike slowly descended down a timeless tube of light until Kiela yanked his shoulder. He shuddered and splashed on.

  Two lights on the shore followed their approach like a pair of weary eyes, blinking heavily and opening each time after a longer darkness. They were scrambling up the slippery rocks when they realised they were truly eyes; those of the dying Gazer. She moan
ed through matted locks, reaching for them with long, curled nails. This was no largatyn and may at one time have been human. She croaked something that had the intonation of a question. Balagir could not tear his gaze away from her eyes. He had seen something similar. The crystal that Zyrath had been looking through. The farseeing jewel. The captured light from time forgotten rebounded therein. The Gazer gave a final pitiful gasp, and her eyes rolled back. Before the light could dim—and much to the horror of the others—he plucked one from the socket with the tip of his dagger. It remained dimly lit in his palm, even as the other grew as dark and dead as she. He could explain later, but for now a dim light showed signs of the largatyn’s hurried descent, and they had to move.

  The starlight was settling once more, but apart from those infinite points, the chamber was quite dark. Balagir drew forth the star-wand and examined the edge of the chamber. Along the shore, beside where the dead Gazer stared upwards with one black eye, was a large stone. It seemed purposely positioned and not part of the natural rock, set at the edge of the faintly lapping lake.

  “Aid me,” he commanded, activating his strength-band. He rocked it slowly, and the others took up stances, adding to the momentum. They only had to shift it marginally to hear the trickle of water passing beneath it. A few more sways saw it topple, and the mountain gasped, drinking down the black water, carrying a million stars with it.

  The largatyn were at the far shore now, and no matter how unappealing crawling into that black chasm might have been, there remained little choice.

  Balagir went first, and grip the entrance as he might, his legs were swiftly sucked from beneath him, and he was swept down in a torrent of drowned constellations.

  Despite the starlight having been cut off from its source, it had not dwindled completely; something of their essence had been compounded into that water, lending it a glittering quality. These were not the only lights. Above on the low ceiling, luminous creatures the size and shape of small, sleeping children languished. They glowed with a radiance that only long evolution could have wrought. These beings had never seen the sun, nor knew of its existence. They appeared subdued, but several heads turned slowly, their eyes the same colour as their transparent bodies.

  Then they were through into a darker chamber, the ceiling so close that Balagir’s shoulder struck sharply and spun him about. If this tunnel had no exit, they would drown here.

  He could hear the gasps and splutters of others behind him in the dark, and once felt a flailing knee in the small of his back, but otherwise lost all trace of his floundering companions.

  By the time the starlight had bled from the water, the chamber opened up, and the flow of water slowed. He drifted then, and snapping tentacles wrapped his ankles, releasing him only to be caught and clung at again. They felt like plants, but in this dark place none dared ponder what manner of thing tried to ensnare them.

  Presently something changed in the blackest hue, a subtle lightening with a taste of snow in the air. The water tugged once more, ever more swiftly until it burst from the mountainside and cascaded onto jagged rocks below. Balagir lunged from the fissure and caught at a snow-covered ledge. Kiela and Freya did likewise to the other side. Ginike screamed, flailed, and only barely clung on to Balagir’s boot, muttering benedictions above the perilous drop. Garill was not so lucky. He grasped at Ginike’s leg, so the three swung like a human chain. Balagir grunted, his purchase diminishing, but it did not last long. A tearing noise saw Ginike’s trousers sunder, and Garill’s round face made a silent plea. Then he was gone, smaller and smaller, leaving a dark smudge on the rocks below before continuing an unstoppable descent.

  With great effort, they hauled themselves up onto the clifftop, panting. They peered down, but Garill was gone. After several moments, his smoke drifted up to meet them. No one spoke. Then they noticed Jerikin was absent. They waited, but it soon became apparent that it was now just the four of them. A fated number. Of course, whatever the lych’s fate, death would not be it. Warily, Balagir made sure his companions were still who they appeared to be. Relieved, he could only hope Jerikin had taken the form of a largatyn and had not become trapped in the body of one of those grotesque creatures.

  As he tapped water from his ear, something permeated the noise of the rushing water. A noise he longed for. He was not the only one to catch it.

  “There,” Freya said, pointing at a glowing dot some distance away along the cliff.

  There was no time to lose, and so, sodden and shivering, the four ashen crunched their way along the snowy ledge.

  They had covered perhaps half of the distance when, from beyond the fire, almost an equal distance as they were from it, the largatyn exploded in a black swarm, scurrying along the cliffs to head them off.

  For a time is was difficult to call who would arrive first, but a kink in the opposite cliff gave them an edge over the raging lizard lords. Even so, they arrived simultaneously, the largatyn’s anguished hisses almost drowning out the tune.

  Zyrath, by far the largest and fastest of their number, lunged to smite them, but they crossed into the circle of light and disappeared like smoke within his deadly embrace.

  They stood, gasping, looking thoroughly wretched before the dozen unfamiliar ashen who looked on with a mixture of amusement and consternation.

  “Someone didn’t want to miss the party,” a large redheaded, red-bearded ashen said, smirking.

  “And I think it’s safe to say they’ll be the last,” a wiry jaegir added mirthlessly. They could all hear the largatyn stomping and hissing about the camp, as though they were outside a tent, invisible yet threatening. “You’d better hope they’re gone after the challenge. I’ve no desire to waste my smoke warping.”

  “Then let us make a start,” an athletic idris said, twirling a staff impatiently in his hands. “Since no one else can assist, I see no reason to delay.”

  Balagir, having recovered his breath, eyed the company. It was as he feared. All here on quick inspection had inventories that suggested greater power and experience than the newcomers. They were also better rested. Kiela and Freya had almost recovered, but Ginike looked on last legs, and the whistle his bent nose emitted, not to mention his missing trousers, did little to counter that impression.

  “How you’ve arrived this far is beyond me,” the jaegir said, looking them over with distaste. “Yet you shall be easy points for the picking.” His eyes lingered on the two women. “You know, it’s not too late to side with us. Leave these two to fail alone.” Kiela snarled defensively, whilst Freya seemed to consider it for a moment. It cost her a lot to turn him down, and surely tested her fragile loyalty to its limit. Groaning, she moved to stand at Balagir’s side. He only hoped she would not come to regret her decision. The jaegir grunted and continued to sharpen his already gleaming blade.

  As the hissing shadows of the largatyn milled about the camp and the other better-prepared ashen hunkered down to discuss tactics, Balagir and his sorry rabble approached the piper and spent the black smoke absorbed from the fallen Toral and Garill. It may have been tainted, but in the face of adversity, they must take whatever they could get.

  XVII

  THE CHIMING CHAMBERS

  There were four groups in all, each consisting of four members. Balagir’s group was the last to approach the portal.

  The first consisted of the large red-haired man, who was positively chomping at the bit to get underway; with him was the cruel, scarred jaegir; a wiry ashen clad in a grey habit with a triangle branded in his forehead; and another man, dressed from head to toe in green with a jaunty green cap, pointed boots, and a fastidiously twisted moustache. They acknowledged the piper and passed through the shimmering space.

  The next group was formed of two idris. There was the athletic one who had spoken earlier, and who wielded a double-ended stave, shiny from practice. The other was more typical of his kind, larger headed, and with airs more scholarly than belligerent. The array of talismans upon his leather breastpla
te hinted that appearances could be deceptive. With them travelled a squat barrel of a ‘gnilo with a blond beard braided past his waist. He sported a hammer that looked fit for tenderising the rump of a kargore, and he didn’t look afraid to bloody it. The fourth, a sour-faced woman who made even Freya appear cordial. She chewed a leaf that left the corners of her mouth sticky with purple tar and bore no visible weapon, but her gauntlets were embedded with vicious claws, and wicked spurs sprouted from her boot heels.

  The third group was an equally odd mixture. The one man, a hairless, soft-paunched eunuch-looking fellow with a yellow robe; a gillard whose gills were capped and regulated by a strange metallic device that hissed as he breathed—an impressive apparatus, though surely not the stealthiest—his worth might be shown were they to encounter water. With them was a tall woman with skin so pale as to reveal the network of blue veins beneath it. Stranger still were her blue eyes, a curious idiosyncrasy amongst ashen. The eclectic group was rounded off by a black-eye with a single shock of white hair running down the centre of his shaven head. His face was pierced by so many metal rings that eating soup must have been an ungracious affair.

  Once they were gone, Balagir’s somewhat mundane and considerably less prepared group stepped forward. Freya bristled with pent determination, Ginike wheezed and worried his twisted lip, Kiela exhaled, resolved that there was no turning back, and Balagir simply shook his head. He may have come far since his last challenge, but they were still lacking in many areas. Still, the same could have been said about the Good Company, and look how that had turned out.

  “Let’s get this over with,” he said, and together they stepped through the glimmering air as the portal shrank away behind them.

  The wind howled, the snow swirled, and somewhere in the cold, white distance, an unknown creature howled. It was not a warm welcome. No footprints led yonder, and although the others had entered, they were not to be found here. The path sloped down towards a white cliff face and the dim outline of a dark entrance. Resolutely, they headed for it, certain only of the fact that many trials lay ahead.