Final Kingdom

by Gilbert L. Morris

  “He told me the same thing.” He looked up at the boy and said with surprising gentleness, “You miss your friend Josh.”

  “Yes, I do. We’ve been together a long time. We haven’t always gotten along, but he’s my friend. I wish we could go back and get him. Oh, I know we can’t,” he said hurriedly, holding up a hand. “All I can hope is that he’s all right. And that somehow we’ll be able to get him back from those people.”

  “It looks like they’re more apt to get us than we are to get him.” Then Beorn’s eyes flashed. “There—did you see that?”

  “Yes, it was the sun on a shield or spear, wasn’t it?”

  “They’re coming up. We’ll have to go on even if Sarah is hurting.”

  They hurried back to the others, and Beorn looked at Glori defiantly. “We’ve got to move.”

  “Sarah’s not able to travel,” she said coldly.

  “She won’t be any better if the Dark Lord’s henchmen get their hands on her. That leg wound will be nothing compared to what they’ll do to her.”

  The coldness between the two, which had always lain just beneath the surface, was now out in the open.

  Glori said, “You were the leader to the Land of Ice, Beorn, but the Sleepers must follow me now. Either take my orders or leave!”

  Beorn said nothing. He settled himself back on his heels and glared at her. He knew what Goél had said. Until now, it had been his task to guide the Sleepers— but she knew these mountains, and he did not.

  “What should we do, Glori?” Reb asked.

  “Just try to lose them. I know a pass up ahead. We may be able to take that, and maybe they’ll lose us. Can you walk, Sarah?”

  “I can make it.” Sarah painfully got to her feet.

  Beorn thought she was trying not to let the pain show on her face.

  The little procession wound upward, all stumbling as they went. Two long hours later, Glori led them off the main trail.

  “Wait! I know this part of the trail at least!” Beorn said. “It’s a dead end.”

  “I know a way out.”

  Beorn tried to argue, but Glori said sharply, “Be quiet, Beorn. We haven’t got time to discuss it. Just follow me!”

  Wearily they forged forward for another hour until they came up against a solid rock wall that barred their path.

  “We can’t climb that!” Dave exclaimed. He turned to Glori.

  She gnawed her lip. “I must’ve taken a wrong turn,” she said.

  Beorn looked back down the path. “Those men are trackers. They’ll find us here. They’re probably right on our heels, so we can’t go back the way we came.”

  All the Sleepers appeared overcome with dismay.

  Sarah slumped to the ground, as though her wounded leg was unable to bear her weight. “What can we do? We’re too weak to fight. We’ve got to hide.”

  “Hide where?” Jake demanded. He looked up at the sheer wall. “There’s no way to go but back.”

  “That won’t do,” Beorn said. “Those trackers are on their way to this spot right now.”

  But Glori said, “We’ll have to go back. There’s no other choice. Maybe they missed our tracks.”

  “No,” Beorn said slowly, “there is another way out.” When they all stared at him in shock, he said, “I recognize this place. I was here only once before, and it was many years ago, but I do remember this one spot.” His dark eyes glowed with sudden fire. “We can go through the Caverns of Doom.”

  The very sound of Beorn’s words visibly sent a chill through every Sleeper.

  “The Caverns of Doom!” Wash exclaimed. “That don’t sound like nothin’ I want to go through.”

  “We can’t go through that place!” Glori exclaimed.

  “Have you ever been there?” Beorn demanded.

  “Of course not! No one goes there—except renegade dwarfs.” She turned to the Sleepers. “The Caverns of Doom are caves made partly by nature, and they became the home of wicked dwarfs.”

  “They were not wicked!” Beorn cried. “They were my forefathers, and that was their home until the Dark Lord sent traitors among us.”

  “I won’t argue about it,” Glori said. “We’re not going through the Caverns of Doom!”

  “Wait a minute, Glori,” Dave said suddenly. He cast a wary glance at the path they had taken to this dead end. “We’ve got to do something. Is it really a dangerous place, Beorn?”

  Beorn did not answer for a moment. Then he said, “Yes, it is dangerous. Foul things lurk there these days —and underground rivers that could sweep us away. But I say that danger is not so great as falling into the hands of the Dark Lord. I would throw myself off a cliff before I would be captured by him!”

  Another debate followed then. Glori firmly argued that it would be suicide to go into the Caverns of Doom. Beorn stubbornly urged that it was their only hope.

  Finally Jake declared, “Look, I’m not going to be caught by those fellows back there. They’d have us in the torture chamber in the Dread Tower before it was over. I vote for the Caverns.”

  “So do I,” Abbey said, surprising Beorn. He’d thought her a timid girl, but apparently she had been given courage for this.

  She came and put a hand on his shoulder. He was shorter than she and, of course, much wider. Summoning up a smile, she said, “I’ll trust you, Beorn. Do you know the way?”

  “If you vote to go, I will do my best to bring you through safely,” Beorn said simply.

  Immediately Reb said, “I’m for the Caverns. Let’s get going.”

  “Me too,” Dave said, and Wash quickly echoed his vote. That left it up to Sarah, who rose with a grimace of pain. “Yes, I’ll try anything to stay out of their hands.”

  Glori glared at the Sleepers. “It is the wrong thing to do,” she said, “but I vowed to Goél to do my best for you. So I will go—though we all go to our deaths.”

  “We do not know that,” Beorn said. His eyes glowed with eagerness. “I know the Caverns will be dangerous, but Goél will be with us, and I think I remember the way. Come—there is a hidden entrance.”

  For the next half hour they scrambled through broken rock along the cliff wall until they reached a small valley.

  “Here,” Beorn said. “Just as I remember. The entrance is right behind that big boulder.”

  “We can’t move that!” Dave exclaimed. “It’s too big.”

  “It’s balanced,” Beorn said. “Look!” He stood under the rock and braced his back against it. Shoving with both of his powerful legs and grunting, he rolled the stone to one side.

  “There,” he said, panting. He motioned to the mouth of an exposed cave. “Get your torches ready. We will burn only one at a time to make sure that they last. Everyone stay as close to me as you can. Dave, you bring up the rear. We go for Goél,” Beorn said. Then he plunged into the dark cavern.

  At first the blackness in the Caverns seemed as thick as the surrounding rock out of which they were carved. Only the flickering light of the torch held aloft by Beorn lit the way. However, Sarah, who followed immediately behind him, discovered that after a time her eyes adjusted to the intense dark. The pathway was wide and flat, as if beaten by many feet. Above, the cave roof arched upward nearly ten feet at the highest point.

  Beorn gave them an encouraging word from time to time. When they came to a fork, he said, “I remember. That way—” he motioned to the right “—leads to a trap. No one comes out again from that passage.”

  “Are you sure it’s the right one that’s the trap?” Glori asked. She stared into both darkened ways and appeared unhappy about the whole thing. “It’s not too late to turn back . . .”

  “We can’t do that,” Sarah said wearily. “Go on, Beorn.”

  Beorn plunged down the left passageway.

  The cavern trail gradually began to lead downward. Sarah felt the tilt of the path beneath her feet. Down, down, down they went. Then she began hearing the gurgle of an underground river, and finally they came to it. Fortun
ately the stream was very narrow.

  “We must fill up our canteens here,” Beorn said, “and drink all we can. I’m not sure when we will find water again.”

  They rested for a while and ate a little. Then Beorn said, “Now we will enter the real dwarf country.”

  “I’m not sure I want to go into the dwarf country,” Reb muttered. He glanced around. He was next in line in front of Dave. Then he reached forward and tapped Wash on the shoulder. “Don’t you get lost. With your coloration it would be easy, and we’d never find you.”

  Wash turned and grinned, his teeth flashing. “May-be you better tie a string on me, Reb.”

  “I don’t know about all this,” Jake muttered. “I never did like underground stuff.”

  “It reminds me of the Underworld,” Abbey murmured. “I wish we had some of our friends from there to guide us.”

  On and on they went until exhaustion compelled them to stop. They sat down to rest, and Sarah and Abbey worked on preparing food. They had bits of cold meat left and some dried fruit that was almost unchewable, but they made the best of it.

  Beorn insisted they keep only one torch burning, saving the others for later. “Plenty of air in here,” he said. “See how the flame burns?” Then he waved an arm. “I remember this place. It was a big conference room in the old days.”

  Then they pulled out their sleeping bags.

  “Hard to know if it’s sleep time when you don’t know whether it’s day or night,” Wash muttered to Reb, who lay only a few feet away.

  “Don’t matter to me,” Reb said cheerfully. “Day or night, I’m sleepy. Sleep when I’m sleepy, drink when I’m dry. That’s what I do.”

  Several hours later, Beorn roused them.

  “I don’t think they would dare follow us down here,” he said, “but we can’t take the chance,” he said. “Reb, you be the rearguard now. From time to time, stop and listen. Call out if you hear anything coming up behind us.”

  “All right, Beorn. If they followed us into the cave, I just hope they took that other fork. We don’t need any battles in here.”

  They trudged on.

  At last Beorn announced, “This is one of the lowest levels of the Caverns of Doom.”

  “We haven’t seen any monsters,” Wash said, looking around nervously. “Maybe they’ve all left.”

  Beorn shook his head in denial. “They are here. And we must be very careful. Not all our enemies are human.”

  He did not elaborate, but just his words were enough to frighten Sarah. She could imagine the horrible things that might lurk underground here—huge worms with sharp teeth and other sorts of terrible monsters. They encountered nothing, however.

  And then they came to another decision point. The cavern broke off once more into two wings. One passageway led upward; the other led down.

  Glori said, “I’ve heard tales of this place. That is the doorway to the deepest part of the Caverns of Doom.” She pointed to the downward passage. “We don’t want to go there.”

  “Yes, we do,” Beorn said. “That way—” he pointed upward “—is where the Dark Lord will have his men stationed. They know we came into the Caverns, and they’ll be waiting for us when we come out. We must go down deeper.”

  Sarah, who by now had a slight fever, could not understand most of the debate that ensued. Eventually she heard somebody say, “We’ll have to take a vote.”

  It was Jake’s voice. “How many of you vote to go down the way Beorn says?” he asked.

  Only Abbey raised her hand.

  Jake said regretfully, “Well, Beorn, it looks like you’re outvoted this time. I think we’ve had all we can take of these tunnels.”

  Beorn shook his head stubbornly. “To go upward is a mistake.”

  “No, it is not!” Glori exclaimed. “We’ll die if we go down farther. Come on, everyone. We’ve got to get out of this horrible pit!”

  Sarah saw Abbey move next to Beorn.

  “I’m sorry,” Abbey said to him. “I did all I could. Everybody’s just so tired and half sick. They’ve got to have light.”

  Beorn did not answer her. Looking toward the trail that led upward, he sighed. “Sometimes the easy way will prove to be the hardest.” There was a note of gloom in his voice. As they started forward and upward, he loosened his battle-ax, and his eyes gleamed in the semidarkness.

  6

  A Fearful Loss

  Somehow the very act of heading upward, where they knew there were light and fresh air, encouraged the Sleepers.

  Wash said, “It was just like going down into your grave when we kept going downhill into that tunnel!”

  Beorn said nothing as they trudged upward. He kept his battle-ax unsheathed though, and his eyes were constantly looking ahead.

  And then they came to a chasm so deep that the light of Glori’s torch would not permit them to see the bottom.

  “I’d hate to fall into that sucker!” Reb whistled softly. He picked up a stone, tossed it over, counted off the seconds, which seemed forever, and finally he heard a faint clink as the stone hit. “Nope—” he shook his head violently “—let’s not fall into there.”

  “This way.” Glori held the torch forward.

  She was standing on the very brink, and Reb came alongside to peer into the gloom ahead. “Are we supposed to cross on that?” he exclaimed.

  What he saw was a fragile bridge that had been constructed across the chasm. It looked so tiny that when Jake joined them he said, “I wouldn’t trust that thing for my cat to walk across!”

  “It will be safe enough. We will go one at a time,” Glori announced. To show her confidence, she strode out onto the bridge and stood in the middle of it. “You see? Just come singly. It’s stronger than it looks.” Then she crossed to the other side and stood waiting, encouraging them to make the trip.

  One by one they crossed over.

  Glori smiled. “Now, from here on it will be better, I trust.”

  “That wasn’t much of a bridge,” Reb grumbled. “They make better bridges than that back where I come from.”

  The Sleepers and the dwarf hurried after Glori as she led them ever upward. The tunnel twisted this way and that, and soon everyone was exclaiming over the breath of fresh air that struck them.

  “I think I see light up ahead!” Sarah cried.

  Reb strained to see, and, sure enough, he could make out a pinpoint of light.

  Glori laughed. “See? I told you this was the way to come.”

  She quickened her pace, the others stumbling after her. The pinpoint of light grew, and then they were almost at the cave entrance.

  “Wait!” Beorn commanded gutturally. “Don’t go out there yet!”

  “You stay in your caverns if you want,” Glori said coldly. “The rest of us need sunlight.”

  She stepped outside into a wooded area, and the Sleepers crowded after her. Reb was almost blinded by the brightness, and he half shut his eyes as he tried to look around.

  “This way,” Glori said. “The trail is plain.”

  “Just a minute,” Dave said. “I thought I saw something . . .”

  “What is it, Dave?” Sarah asked.

  “I thought I saw sunlight reflecting on some metal.”

  “There’s no metal up here in these woods!” Jake exclaimed. “Wait, I see it too.” Then he cried, “Look out, here they come! They found us!”

  Instantly the air was filled with flying arrows. The Sleepers stumbled back into the shelter of the cavern, and Beorn cried, “The rest of you—take the torch and go back! I will hold them here at the entrance.”

  “I’ll stay and help you,” Dave said firmly.

  “I’m staying too!” Jake said, his jaw pushed out in a daring way.

  “So am I,” Reb said. “Wash, take the girls back. Look after them. We’ll give you a chance to get across the bridge.”

  Wash didn’t want to leave them, Reb could tell. But he obeyed, and the other three Sleepers and Glori —and the torch— quickly d
isappeared back down into the cavern.

  Beorn said, “Four for one then.” He smiled crookedly. “We have some advantage—the warriors won’t be able to use their bows as well in here. And they’ll be blinded by the darkness.”

  The four defenders stood shoulder to shoulder in the darkness. Soon they heard voices. And then they saw that they did have the advantage, for they could see their enemies against the light of the cave opening. Those who came at them could see nothing.

  They heard the hissing of Beorn’s battle-ax, though, and felt the slashes of the swords wielded by Dave and Reb and Jake. Shrill cries went up until, it seemed, the warriors could not be urged further into the blackness to face unseen death.

  “Now,” said Beorn, “we go.”

  The defenders slowly gave way, leaving their attackers—many fallen—behind them. They groped their way back down the unlit tunnel to the bridge, where they found the others on the far side, waiting with the welcome torch.

  When the four had crossed, Beorn began hacking at the timbers that held the bridge in place. His sharp ax made the chips fly.

  Glori said, “If you destroy the bridge, we can’t get back across!”

  “And they can’t get at us!” Beorn answered grimly. Soon the bridge sagged, then with a crash ripped loose from its moorings. It fell into the cavernous depths, turning slowly, and made a tremendous smash at the bottom of the cavern.

  “Now we go back,” Beorn said. He stared at Glori as if awaiting a challenge, but she said nothing.

  “Just a minute,” Wash whispered. “I. . . I don’t think I can make it. . .” And he collapsed.

  “Wash!” Reb cried. “What’s the matter? Bring the light over here!”

  Reb leaned over him. “He’s taken an arrow!”

  The arrow was a short, stubby one, more a dart than an arrow, but it had pierced Wash’s side. Abbey tried to stem the severe bleeding.

  Wash, however, whispered, “No, you’ve . . . got to go on!”

  “Wash,” Reb said, his voice breaking, “you’ll be all right.”