by Barb Hendee
Something moved beyond the archway.
It wavered from side to side, staggering forward through the dark. Large, dwarven hands covered his broad features, smothering his haggard, rapid breaths. One eye peered at her through his thick fingers. Then his left hand slid off his face and clutched the archway’s side. Though his other hand remained, its fingers curled upward into his red-brown hair.
This “like” brother—“twin” brother, at a guess—had a broad jaw, once clean-shaven and now shadowed with days of stubble. His eyes were sunken in dark circles, as if he hadn’t slept in many nights. He was young, or might have seemed so, if his face weren’t twisted in horror.
For an instant, Wynn thought she knew him, but that wasn’t possible. She didn’t even know where she was—or who she was. Nothing about this place was familiar.
. . . loved ones now hunt you . . . they are coming . . . be ever watchful...
The brother’s gaze darted quickly about, searching the hearth room.
He heard those gale whispers, just as she did!
. . . never close your eyes again . . . not ever . . . not until they all die . . .
His jaw muscles bulged as his hand jerked from his head, haplessly tearing out tangles of hair. That hand balled into a massive fist.
Wynn saw the same rage in his face that she’d heard in the voice of this memory’s owner, the other brother. She rushed forward, grabbing the brother’s vestment’s front with one large hand. She felt her other hand groping for something at her waist.
“Why are you still here?” she shouted in the deep voice that was not her own. “I told you to leave, while you still could. Get out of here!”
The brother froze, his fist still raised. Then the gale grew once more in Wynn’s mind.
. . . if they see you, kill them quickly.... They will kill you, if they can. . . . They will; you know this....
Wynn’s lower hand clenched. She jerked hard, though she barely glimpsed what she gripped. Her gaze remained locked on the brother as he pulled a dagger from a sheath on his belt. He raised it, point downward.
The leaf-wing came again in Wynn’s head.
I am with you—hear only me. Hear the quiet I bring to your thoughts.
Wynn froze as the brothers faced each other, each ready to strike the other down.
A scream carried from somewhere distant.
Wynn released her grip and backstepped, not knowing what she—he—was doing. She spun toward the distant sound.
Then she saw what had become of the furniture.
Chairs, stools, an oak table, and even a large chest were piled against the door of this place. Everything from this room must have been thrown against it in blind desperation. When her focus turned back, the haggard brother stared toward the door, as well. His eyes were wide in fear as he shuddered and looked at her.
“Come . . . come, please,” he begged, stuttering. “Come with me.”
“No,” Wynn answered. “Go alone, as I told you.”
“Do not do this!” the brother shouted, advancing one step, anger returning to his face. “Your brethren have fallen, like the rest . . . though first, did they not? They locked the people from the temple . . . and you helped them? In this plague of madness, where are the people to go even if any could think to leave . . . if any could escape?”
He stepped farther out into the hearth room.
The brother’s vestment might have been russet, but it was too filthy, and there was too little light to be certain. His gaze dropped downward, and whoever Wynn was here and now followed that gaze. Wynn saw what she held.
The long, triangular dagger, its base as wide as his fist, had straight edges that tapered directly to its point. Its polished guard and pommel were almost silvery, and bits of the hilt that showed around his broad fist looked lacquered in pure black.
It was the blade of a stonewalker.
Wynn cringed within that imprisoning memory, not wanting to accept what that might mean. The gale whispers rose, as if called by her fear. The single leaf-wing didn’t return until the stonewalker—she—raised the blade.
This is not the one you must kill.
Wynn felt the stonewalker falter as he—she—looked at his brother.
Cling to me alone.
She sensed no true comfort in those words, and they gave her none. That leaf-wing voice didn’t speak to her. It spoke to him, the owner of this memory. She heard it, felt it, only because he did.
Wynn began to doubt even more.
Those words couldn’t have come from the monster in the tunnel. They were just part of this memory. What was it that had come to this place? What spoke to this stonewalker?
“By our blood, remember me,” she—he—whispered. “But once you leave here, never speak my name again. By our blood, I bind you to this . . . let me be forgotten by all.”
Shock rose on the brother’s face as he shook his head in disbelief. The instant he opened his mouth to speak, the stonewalker turned.
Wynn saw the wall coming at her as he raced toward it, into it. She remembered why that first, suffocating blackness felt like it had entombed her. Stonewalkers could move through anything of earth and stone. But even that didn’t silence the gale whispers inside of him, inside of her.
She didn’t want to see anymore. But as he raced through open tunnels, passages, and chambers, she couldn’t look away or close her—his—eyes.
He never paused, always running for the next wall, but Wynn saw things . . . heard things. Between the silence and blackness of each dive into stone, wails of manic fear and rage echoed in every space.
Two dwarven women tore at each other until one ripped the other’s throat open with her bare hands. She’d barely let the body fall when she whirled toward a male with his back turned. She threw herself at him, her stained hands reaching around to tear at his face.
A young female shoved an old man aside as they both tried to get through a door. She slammed it shut in his face, though he pounded on it as the sound of heavy boots closed upon him.
A red-spattered warrior beat upon the fallen with his mace, shrieking at them to get away or he would kill them all. They were already dead, mangled beyond recognition, yet he wouldn’t stop.
A silent dwarven child felt her way along a wall. She couldn’t see because of the blood running out of her hair and into her eyes.
At the center of a large chamber filled with tables and stools, an elder male crouched upon a greeting-house dais. He rocked slowly, whispering to himself as if in prayer . . . and then he laughed in hysteria as his gaze flitted about at nothing.
The blackness of stone came again and again. Each time, Wynn wished it would be the last.
Let her stay in that cold, encasing darkness, where she—he—would see nothing ever again. She didn’t want to know more of the madness, the whispers, waiting with each return of dim light. When it came again, she would’ve whimpered if she’d had her own voice.
And the stonewalker halted.
It was darker here than any other place, even more than the home of his brother. It was almost quiet, except for a pounding in his ears. Wynn didn’t want him to turn around, but he did.
A great archway filled her sight. Its double doors were shut, sealed with an iron bar that rotated on a rivet larger than her arm. It wasn’t broken like the last time she’d seen it. The muted rumbling of thunder reverberated through those doors.
There were people out there, on the other side, pounding to get in.
“What are you doing?”
At that menacing whisper, the stonewalker grabbed for both blades on his belt. As he twisted around, Wynn saw immense, dark forms in the hall. Great silhouettes of statues reached toward a ceiling lost in the pitch-black heights. Three each lined the hall’s longer walls, and Wynn knew where she was. She was still in Bäalâle, in its hall of the Eternals, but not as she’d found it. It was whole, as if from another time, long ago. A flickering light caught her eye, and she—he—watched an approac
hing flame.
That torch’s light illuminated the bearer’s reddened face of broad features and gray beard. His eyes were so wide, the whites showed all around his black-pellet irises. Firelight glinted on the steel tips of his black-scaled armor.
The old one was another stonewalker.
“You would let them in!” he accused.
“No . . . not anymore,” Wynn answered in the deep, masculine voice.
“Liar!” the other hissed, and his free hand dropped to a dagger’s hilt. “Where have you been? To your prattling brother?”
Wynn didn’t answer, but felt her—his—grip tighten on the hilt of his battle dagger.
“Is that how it started?” the old stonewalker whispered, creeping forward. “All of them turning against us, once the siege began. What deceits did you spit into the people’s ears . . . through your brother?”
And the whisper gale rose again.
. . . no one left to trust . . . never turn your back . . . they are coming for you . . .
His hand slipped from the dagger’s hilt. Wynn felt pain as the young stonewalker slapped the side of his own head. The leaf-wing rose instantly, its voice too loud over the gale of whispers.
Listen only to me—cling only to me.
Its crackling skitter smothered all thoughts from Wynn’s awareness.
“No . . .” the young stonewalker moaned. His other hand slapped his skull as he shouted, “Leave me be!”
“Leave you be?” hissed the elder, almost in puzzlement.
Wynn realized the old one hadn’t heard the leaf-wing.
“Why would I?” the elder went on. “You—you did this to us, traitor. You and your brother . . . made them come for us!”
“No,” he groaned. “My brother has no part in this.”
“More lies!” shouted the elder, jerking his blade from its sheath.
Do what is necessary and come to me.
At the sound of that leaf-wing, the young stonewalker closed his hands tighter on his head. And the elder dropped his torch and charged.
“Keep your treachery,” the old one shouted, raising the dagger. “Byûnduní!”
Do not listen. Come to me.
The young stonewalker squeezed his skull ever tighter, trying to crush that voice from his head. But Wynn didn’t feel the pain. She only shriveled within upon hearing his name.
She tried frantically to escape once more to the real world, to escape this memory of Byûnduní—of Deep-Root—of Thallûhearag, the Lord of Slaughter.
Sau’ilahk raced down the tunnel, following a conjured servitor of light to break the darkness. The tunnel began to intersect with smaller, branching passages, but he kept to the main one, always heading downward into the mountain’s depths.
His servitor shot into a small cave, and Sau’ilahk halted at the dead end.
Upon seeing no breaches, passages, or another way in or out, his frustration threatened to boil over into rage. Where could he look now? How many narrow tunnels had he passed along the way? The orb had to be here somewhere!
Then he saw the bones.
There were so many, and they were so old that they blended with the loose stones and rubble on the cave floor. Some were still embedded at the base of the far wall, and he wondered how this could be. Had the rest that were lying about been dug up? Curiosity quelled frustration as his thoughts turned to what little he knew of this place.
Beloved’s forces had breached the seatt, and then a catastrophe struck. The mountain peak had collapsed, killing both sides during the siege. He had wondered over the centuries what could have created such devastation.
Sau’ilahk had seen no more bones along the tunnel, but he was deep down now, and the bones here were numerous. Something had happened here, something had been . . . dug up? Turning one hand corporeal, he began digging, scattering loosened debris and bones. Then his fingers scraped something hard and dense.
Calling up his reserve of consumed life, he turned his other hand corporeal and began tearing away more loose rubble and dirt. He kept clawing and scraping on something hard as stone. The more he dug around it, the more he felt it was too round and almost smooth.
He frantically brushed the dust from its gritty surface.
It was a globe slightly larger than a great helm, made of dark, near-black, stone. Though faintly rough, its rounded surface was too perfect to be natural. The large, tapered head of a spike protruded atop it. When he rolled it slightly in the rubble, he saw the spike’s tip sticking out through the globe’s bottom. Spike and globe were one, chiseled from a single piece.
Waves of joy inside him mixed with an unexpected outrage.
Made by his god, by Beloved’s own will, the orb . . . the Anchor of Spirit had been left like forgotten rubbish among dirt and bones. Perhaps the catastrophe had caught the Children who had brought it. That they had been buried among Beloved’s minions, his tools, brought some satisfaction to Sau’ilahk. And the anchor had remained where it had fallen in a long-forgotten time, waiting for him to claim.
He would be beautiful again and forever young. The promise made to him so long ago would be fulfilled. This time, he had not been betrayed.
Beloved, he whispered with his thoughts.
Through that whelp of a sage, his god had led him to his own salvation. Drawing deep on his reserves, he turned his whole body corporeal and picked up the heavy orb, finally, after a thousand years. As his cloth-wrapped arms closed around it, he just stood there, and relief made him almost wearier than anything else.
He looked down at what he held and went numb inside.
In those ancient days, he never actually touched the anchors. Only the Children were so privileged. He had seen one on rare occasions when one of them carried it out for a purpose his god had commanded. But he knew of them, all five, each one an anchor binding one Element of Existence. Each one enslaved a different primal component for his god’s bidding.
Although the orb lay dormant in his arms, he should still be able to feel its essence. Through his Beloved, through his own nature as an eternal spirit, he should feel the core of its elemental nature and the spark of Spirit trapped within it.
The spark was not there.
Sau’ilahk stared at the orb in his arms. He sensed something from it, but its presence felt deeply . . . grounded? There was nothing within it close to his nature as a pure, undying . . . spirit.
He looked about the cave. Anguish returned, swelling into horror.
Those reptilian creatures must have dug into this place in the seatt’s bowels. The state of the bones suggested something else had happened here. Beloved’s forces must have tried to dig in under the seatt, to come in from beneath before anyone here realized. But in the end, they must have been discovered.
Something had gone horribly wrong. Beloved’s forces had died here, buried under the mountain along with their enemies. And here was the orb.
But what would the orb of Spirit be worth in this place? Nothing, now or then. This was not the orb of Spirit. It was one of the others, perhaps the orb of Earth? He had been following Wynn all this time . . . only to find the wrong orb.
At that truth, Sau’ilahk began to moan.
Dust and dirt stirred as conjury-twisted air gave a voice to his pain. He began weeping, and his growing rage turned into a wail. His shrieks filled the deadend cave with so much wind that pebbles scored the walls and bones rattled across the floor.
Sau’ilahk screamed, Betrayer!
He had been cheated again by the half-truths of his god, as he had a thousand years ago with the promise of eternal life.
A hissing whisper rose in his thoughts. Do not despair.
Sau’ilahk was beyond caring if he offended his god, and he screamed back, Wellspring of lies . . . of deceits!
He dropped the orb. Rubble and bones crackled under its weight, along with a metallic clang. Hope of beauty and eternal youth withered, and the pain of renewed loss was too great to bear. He screamed at his god once more.
The hiss assailed him again.
She lives . . . but if you choose to no longer obey, servant, then seek on your own.
Sau’ilahk’s shrieking wind died. If Wynn lived, why would his treacherous god allow him freedom to do as he pleased? What could he do that he had not tried already in a millennium of searching? He was done with this place, and his misery made him wish to be gone.
That whisper like reptilian scales sliding over sand tore at him again.
Every anchor has its chain, its handle, by which to haul it, just as every portal has its key by which to open it. Did you not hear the key speak?
He was too anguished to care about more taunting hints, but Beloved went on.
Since you no longer hear me, servant . . . perhaps you will remember having heard it.
Sau’ilahk stood still, suspicion growing within him. What was this nonsense about chains, handles, or keys . . . for the anchors of Existence?
He looked down at the one he had dropped.
The orb just lay at his feet, but there had been a sound when it fell that was wrong. Not the dull crack of stone upon stone, or even bones, but a metallic clank. He crouched, forcing one hand corporeal again, and shoved the orb aside.
In the depression its bulk had made was a spot of ruddy golden hue.
Sau’ilahk quickly slapped away dirt and dust until it was fully revealed. Before him lay a thick and heavy circlet of a rusty-golden metal, neither brass nor gold. Its open ends had protruding knobs pointing directly at each other. Its circumference was covered in engravings, though he could not read those marks.
Sau’ilahk remembered seeing such an item before. Once when he had witnessed one of the Children departing with an anchor, an orb, it had worn just such an open-ended circlet about its pale neck.
He glanced toward the orb and saw something more in the tapered head of its spike.
There were grooves about the right size for the circlet’s knobs. Was this key, this handle, how an orb was truly used? Even so, what good was it to him? This orb was not the one he desired.