Darkwell

by Douglas Niles

  This roomy chamber had been the best of many they had discovered. It had a slow but steady draft that carried the smoke from the room, and yet it was far enough from the outside that the light of the fire would be invisible to anyone beyond the walls of the lair. And now the fire had generated enough coals to warm the chamber appreciably.

  Robyn and Tristan, too, massaged their numbed feet beside the fire. The moorhound lay sound asleep, curled between them and unmindful of the steam sizzling from his drenched coat. Yak snored loudly in a corner of the chamber, and Newt had gone off somewhere to explore the ruins.

  “I suppose we’d better wake him when his fur starts to singe,” Robyn said with a smile, gesturing at the dog.

  Tristan nodded. Weariness flowed through his body as he relaxed for the first time in days. “I never thought I’d be glad to see this place again!”

  “Nor I. We were glad enough to get away the first time! I only wish Yazilliclick had turned up. I fear for him.”

  “Yes.” Tristan felt a wave of melancholy. He thought of the good friends he had had, and lost, in the time since they had first discovered this lair and he had gained the Sword of Cymrych Hugh. Keren, the master bard, who had died in the fight against Kazgoroth the Beast. Hugh O’Roarke, bandit lord of Callidyrr, fallen in the battle against the High King. And of course, Daryth.

  “Hey, you guys! Get up! Let’s go exploring!” Newt darted into their chamber from one of the side passages. “There’s all kinds of tunnels, and a deep well—Oh, and there’s a bunch of dead firbolgs that got squished when the place—” He stopped suddenly, with a guilty look at Yak, but the giant snored on.

  “I don’t think we’re going anywhere for a while,” groaned Robyn. “My feet are finally getting warm and dry again, and I’m keeping them that way for as long as I can!”

  “Awww! You guys are no fun at all! Say, what’s for supper? Didn’t you say we could eat after we found shelter?”

  Newt eagerly dived at a piece of hardtack, seizing the dried biscuit and chewing contentedly. Despite his bluster and humor, his color had faded to a bluish green, and Tristan saw him glance frequently toward the entrance. Even the faerie dragon was worried about Yazilliclick.

  “How far is it to the grove of the Great Druid? That’s where the druids are now, right?” Tavish asked Robyn.

  “It used to be two days march or so to Myrloch and along the eastern shore, about halfway up the vale. Now, what with blizzards and gas fissures and tar pits, I don’t know how long it will take.”

  “And what will we do when we get there?”

  Tristan had wondered about the same thing for some time.

  “I assume that things have gotten worse since last I saw the Moonwell. At that time, the surviving druids of the vale, a score or so of them, had been frozen into stone statues by the power of the goddess. It was either that or face death at the hands of zombies and walking skeletons under the command of the evil cleric.

  “Now, with the extent of the corruption through the vale, I can only guess that the Moonwell itself has been desecrated. It is the spiritual heart of the islands, and only through it could enough power be channeled to cause destruction on the scope we’re seeing.”

  “But how do we face something that powerful?” Tristan didn’t like the odds.

  “I have a single hope, found in the scrolls the northman gave me. Those parchments, the Scrolls of Arcanus, contain secrets of ancient clerical lore. They were scribed by a cleric of another goddess, called Chauntea. But many of the tenets of her faith are very close to those of the Earthmother. Included among them are the mastery of the four elements!”

  “Air, water, fire, and earth,” interjected Tavish.

  “Yes, earth … or stone.” She told them how she had journeyed to the vale by using the mastery of air and becoming part of the wind itself. “The other three scrolls allow similar control—either to summon, shape, use, or actually become the element, once per scroll.

  “I shall save the scroll of stone. When we reach the well, I shall use my mastery of stone to free the druids from their statues. Together we might have enough force to purify the well.”

  “Keep the scrolls safe,” suggested Pawldo. “It’s not much of a plan, but it seems to be the best we have.”

  “Let’s take advantage of the shelter we have for tonight. This may be the last warmth we feel until this is over.” Tristan remained well aware of the snow falling outside and the impact that the weather might have upon the rest of their mission.

  “I have no problem with that,” agreed Tavish. “I’ll take the first watch. I want to dry out my pants.”

  “I’ll get up for the last watch,” blurted Pawldo, very hastily. The others took no note of his urgency as they divided up the rest of the night. All of them except Tavish quickly settled down to sleep.

  The bard awakened Robyn after several hours. She in turn called Tristan to the watch for the third quarter, then returned to sleep. The king finally awakened the halfling as night approached dawn.

  Pawldo stood a nervous guard duty until he saw that the king had fallen asleep. Then he silently checked over his gear—shortbow, sword, rope, and lockpick. With a last look at his sleeping companions, he turned into one of the dark passages and started to make his way deeper into the firbolg lair.

  Taggar, shaman of Norland, sat back from his ashes with a frown. The pattern was clear, unmistakable to such a devout follower of Tempus. He knew that Grunnarch had called the Council of Winternight for the following evening. All day the warlords of Norland had been arriving, taking up quarters in the best lodges in Norland town.

  The prophecy so plainly indicated by his ashes surely must refer to one of these worthies … but which one? With a shrug, the shaman climbed to his feet. If Tempus did not want to reveal any more, so be it. The cleric would tell his king all he knew of the prophecy. It would be up to Grunnarch to figure out what it meant.

  He found his liege feasting in his lodge with Eric Graybeard and Urk Bearstooth, two of his favored lieutenants. Grunnarch bade him speak in the presence of them all, so Taggar told of the casting of ashes and of the message Tempus had given him therein.

  “Sire, the message is this: One will travel to see you, bearing a message of great import and a plea for help. You must heed his call.”

  “Hmph!” The king scoffed at the message. “When is the day someone does not come to see me with an important message and a plea for my aid?”

  “But sire, consider the rest of the prophecy: This one will not walk nor swim to Norland. Nor will he ride cart or steed or ship! But he will arrive, just the same.”

  And then the cleric went back into the night, wondering at the ways of gods and kings and men.

  he Starling bobbed and dipped in the choppy sea. Each crushing wave poured more water over the little boat’s bow, and the hull was soon awash to knee-depth. Koll held the tiller against the strain of fatigue and cold, shivering uncontrollably. He tried to avoid looking at Gwen but could not tear his eyes from her miserable form.

  She huddled in the bow, wrapped in the tattered shawl that was their only protective garment. She had bailed until her strength failed, and then she had collapsed. It had been hours since she had moved, and Koll wondered if she was dying.

  The wind roared out of the north like a vengeful dragon, lashing first one side of the boat, then the other, as Koll tacked his way into the teeth of the wind.

  By dawn of their second day at sea, he forced himself to face the truth: They would never make it to Norland. He had been a fool for even trying the voyage, and his foolishness would cost them both their lives. Why hadn’t he taken her to Corwell? She, at least, with the blood of the Ffolk in her veins, would have been safe there.

  He felt a sudden jolt against the hull and feared for a moment that he had struck a rock, but that was impossible. They were in the middle of the Sea of Moonshae, with no shoals for a hundred miles. Again the little boat lurched, and he heard the unmistakable scraping
of stone against wood.

  Suddenly the Starling heeled violently to the side, and he saw her frail timbers cave in under the force of a violent collision. Instinctively he lunged forward, grabbing Gwen as she rolled to the side, and then they both tumbled into the frothing sea.

  His shoulder crashed against something hard and unforgiving, unmistakably stone, and then he found himself sprawled on a flat surface, holding the unconscious maiden to his chest. The water drained away around them, and he looked up in astonishment and awe to see four towering spires rising above him, looming on each of the points of the compass.

  The wreck of the Starling was carried away by the rushing waves, but he remained in place, sitting upon a surface of flagstones. Too stunned to speak, he stared at the four high walls of a great castle that had somehow appeared around him.

  It had risen from the sea! His boat, he realized, had smashed itself into the crenellated parapet of the castle wall, dumping them into the courtyard as it foundered. Now he sat upon the floor of the courtyard, looking at a few dozen fish that flopped helplessly as the rest of the water drained away.

  Gwen opened her eyes and looked around in a daze. “Where are we?” she asked weakly. “Is this a dream? Are we dead?”

  “We’re not dead, and this is no dream. I don’t know what this is or where we are, but this place has saved us!”

  She sighed and leaned against him with a frail smile. “That’s nice,” she whispered and closed her eyes again. He noticed with grief that her lips were blue and her breathing shallow. Once again he looked up and saw a wide stairway leading to a massive pair of doors in the castle wall.

  He wrapped the shawl more tightly around Gwen and lifted her in his arms, surprised at how little she weighed. Still not sure he believed this whole thing, he started up the stairs. Perhaps there was something in the castle that could help them. In any event, he was determined to take every advantage of this unexpected chance to remain alive.

  Pawldo slipped silently down the darkened passage. He paused every few steps to listen but heard no sound from any of the labyrinthine passages. His eyes, far more keen than their human counterparts, penetrated the blackness enough to show him where a side corridor joined the one he was in or to warn him, as now, of a gaping pit that suddenly yawned at his feet.

  He stepped around the pit, which had apparently been created when the stronghold had collapsed, and continued deeper into the maze.

  His destination was a chamber etched firmly in his memory, but its location had become more problematical. The halfling chose his route partially from memory, partially from an intuitive sense, and often because pieces of the collapsed structure blocked corridors he would have chosen to follow.

  Often he scrambled over piles of broken granite or spilled earth. Once he was forced to squirm underneath a broken, charred beam.

  But he pressed on with singleminded determination, motivated by the one great love of his life: treasure. He remembered the room they had discovered upon first entering this stronghold, the gold and silver coins piled in great heaps, the gems scattered among them, gleaming with all the colors of the rainbow.

  He felt certain that the treasure room lay very close now. A sharp jog in the corridor looked very familiar, and then his pulse pounded as he saw a dead-end passage leading to a heavy oaken door. This was it!

  Nothing disturbed the stillness of the labyrinth. Musty beams, jagged pieces of rock, and a heavy coat of dust filled the passage. Pawldo saw that the heavy door stood firm, unaffected by the force of the cave-in. Carefully he wormed his way under another beam and around a boulder until he reached the door and examined it. He had no doubts as to what chamber it protected. The spot had burned itself indelibly into his mind, and even the chaos wrought by the cave-in and fire could not erase the image.

  He examined the heavy lock, remembering that Daryth had picked this same lock with no difficulty during the Darkwalker War. Pawldo removed his trusty lockpick from his belt and carefully slipped it into the narrow hole. Let’s see, a little probe this way, a pull that way, and …

  Snap! “Hey! What’s going on?” Pawldo leaped, or rather tried to leap, backward, but the sudden clasp of a pair of metal handcuffs held him securely to the door. “Damn!” he whispered. “A trap!”

  Indeed, two firm iron bracelets had sprung from the door when his probe had pulled on the lock. Now they pinched his wrists in a most uncomfortable, and permanent-looking, fashion.

  Pawldo suppressed a momentary surge of panic. What would Daryth do at a time like this? For the first time, the halfling grudgingly admitted to himself that the Calishite had been a master at such tasks as opening locks and finding traps.

  He remembered Daryth’s gloves, which Tristan had given to Pawldo after the Calishite’s death. They had shrunk to fit the halfling’s hands perfectly, so much so that Pawldo had forgotten that he still wore them. Now he looked at them on his fingers, barely visible in the dim light. At the same time, he tugged very gently at the handcuffs imprisoning him.

  His hands came free! They slid right through the manacles, as if the gloves could not be held in such confinement. Murmuring a quick prayer of thanks to Daryth, wherever he was, Pawldo drew one of the wire lockpicks from its pouch in the glove. Once again he probed the lock, and this time it popped open quickly.

  Pawldo’s eyes flashed, and the pounding of his heart threatened to shake more rocks from the ceiling as he seized the door and pushed it open. The halfling darted through the portal, his darkness-attuned eyes flashing as he stared eagerly around the room.

  And then his eagerness turned to shock, then disbelief, then anger. This was indeed the firbolg treasure room, but it was virtually empty!

  “What happened to the treasure?” he groaned. “Thieves! It’s been stolen! Why, those scum! If I get my hands …”

  He slumped to the floor, stunned. A single coin gleamed mockingly from beneath the layer of dust. Pawldo picked it up and brushed it off to reveal a virtually worthless copper piece. The dust covered everything in the room nearly a half inch thick, so he knew that the plundering had occurred long ago.

  Perhaps the few surviving firbolgs had carried their treasure away when they abandoned the ruins of the stronghold. Or maybe a band of dwarves—avaricious fellows, dwarves!—had come upon the place. For several minutes, the halfling stewed, his rage building as he groped for someone to blame.

  Finally he realized there was little point in trying to pinpoint the blame. The bulk of the treasure had been removed, and that was that. He saw several other dust-covered coins and checked each one, but all of them proved to be copper.

  “Not just thieves, but discriminating thieves!” he grumbled.

  He saw an irregularity in the dusty surface beside a fallen beam and brushed it away to reveal a glint of gold in the form of a thin chain. He tugged on it and pulled forth a round medallion as big as his hand. Here was something worthwhile! The medallion was pure gold, in the circular shape of the sun, and it surrounded a large rose made from several rubies. Eagerly he tucked it into his pocket, reaching below the beam with his tiny hands. Perhaps the plunderers had missed a spot!

  His efforts were rewarded as he pulled out a few gold and silver coins. Pawldo then encountered an odd shape, and tugged at it a few times to bring forth an unusual object. It was a pair of spectacles. One lens was cracked, and one of the temples had fallen off. The halfling started to toss the thing aside, but something stayed his hand. With a shrug, he stuffed them into his pouch with the rest of his loot and went back to the search.

  Near the end of the beam, he found something that caused his heart to quicken again. At first, his touch told him it was merely a pebble, firmly wedged beneath the wood. But his delicate fingers felt the pebble carefully and detected numerous facets on a very smooth surface.

  “Stones don’t have facets,” he murmured. “But gems do!”

  As a pebble, the stone was rather small, but if it indeed was a gem, it was one of quite respectable
size. Eagerly he got out his dagger and pried at the bottom of the beam. In moments, he was rewarded as the object popped free and rolled onto the open floor.

  “That’s it!” he gasped, picking it up. Even in the darkness his keen eyes could make out the crystalline outline, fatter than his finger. The hard surface felt cool to his touch, and he suspected that he held a gem of surpassing wealth, though he could not discern its nature. From its great size, he judged that it would be an amethyst or bloodstone, since it was too large to be a ruby, emerald, or diamond. Still, the thieves had missed something valuable after all!

  Then the beam he had moved shifted again with a dull thump. He heard a scraping sound from the ceiling and scampered out of the way just as a great rock broke free and tumbled onto the chamber floor. Another rumbled free, and Pawldo quickly dived through the door. A thunderous crash emerged from the room as the entire ceiling collapsed, sending a cloud of dust into his face and shaking the foundation of the stronghold.

  The walls around him rumbled, and then the whole place started to collapse.

  “What if he doesn’t come back?”

  “What?” Randolph looked up, irritated, from his mug. Pontswain’s question, after an hour of total silence, jarred him unpleasantly.

  “The king. What if he doesn’t come back from his quest?” Pontswain leaned forward, his eyes alight.

  The two men sat alone in the Great Hall of Corwell. A low fire smoldered in the hearth, and the hour was late. Each of them held a large tankard, now nearly emptied of ale.

  “What kind of a question is that?” Randolph did not try to hide his annoyance.

  “A good question … quite practical. I should think, to you and me, it would be a question of great pertinence.” Pontswain smiled, his lips creased in an oily grin.