by James Green
“See, no threat whatsoever,” Amber said. “Sergeant, please open the gates and let us through.”
The sergeant nodded and took a large key off a hook on the wall that was well out of reach of the gates. With the sounds of a well-oiled mechanism the lock disengaged, and the sergeant pulled the gate open wide.
A set of well-lit wide steps led down, a slightly damp, musty smell wafting up them. Mithra went ahead of us, his nose in the air as he took in the new smells.
“Why do you call this the catacombs, anyway? Isn’t it just the basement of the palace?”
Amber laughed and gripped my arm tighter for a moment. “Forgive my laughter. I forget that not everyone knows as much about Mianya as the people who live here.”
“Tell me then; why do you have mushroom-eating vagrants living in your basement?” I asked, making her laugh again.
“You took Palace Road up the hill to get here, right?” she asked. “Did you know that at one time you could have made the trip up entirely through the catacombs? The entire hill is full of tunnels and chambers. So many that we’ve lost track of all of them. Tunnels collapse and new ones are dug out, or old ones reopened. The common folk don’t venture deep any longer, for fear of getting lost or robbed and murdered.”
“That doesn’t make this place sound safe,” I said.
“What is?” she asked. “Honestly though the upper levels are very boring. The palace guard patrols them regularly, evicting any Saprophytes or others they find lurking.”
We walked along wide corridors carved out of solid stone. Glowing globes were affixed to the stone walls at regular intervals, their dim magical light creating long black shadows. The slope was gentle but we were definitely moving down.
Rats the size of house cats scurried out of sight as we approached. A particularly fat one didn’t move quite fast enough. Mithra darted forward, jaws clamping down behind its head. It shrieked for a moment before he snapped its neck with a vicious shake of his head. He settled down to eat his kill, ripping large chunks of flesh free and swallowing them whole. Rather than wait for him, we kept walking.
“Don’t worry, he’ll catch up. It won’t take him long to eat that,” I assured Amber.
The corridor we were in curved right and then opened up, the floor dropping away as we entered an enormous natural cavern. I could hear water dripping somewhere, a steady tack, tack, tack. Thick stalactites dropped from the ceiling to meet their matching stalagmites on the floor. Shallow pools of water were scattered here and there, still black water reflecting the few light orbs that had been carefully placed here. Patches of mushrooms of various shapes and colors grew in crevices and along walls.
“Oh, I love this place,” Amber gushed. “I used to come down here all the time as a child. I’d play hide and seek with the servants. Sometimes it would take hours for them to find me, and they’d have to get help from the guards.”
“I’m not sure you can still call it hide and seek when they have to send out a search party.”
“It was all in good fun. Servants can be so uptight. Daddy was never mad at me.”
Mithra rejoined us, licking his chops. The ramp down to the floor of the cavern was a gentle slope, winding around one side. We walked down it at a relaxed pace, and at the bottom Mithra left us to explore the cavern, sniffing curiously.
“Father had one of the larger caverns turned into a habitat for Grimjaw. It’s just ahead. The old man loves it there. Father spared no expense; there are sunlight globes and plants. He even had the artisans construct a large pond full of fish that we keep stocked for him.”
Amber led us across the floor of the cavern toward another wide corridor leading onward. When we were nearly there, something in the shadows along the wall to my right caught my eye. A corpse.
I pushed Amber behind me and snapped Rime into position, eyes scanning for threats. Nothing moved.
The corpse was a human man, wearing little but the ragged remains of what once might have been robes. A long, vomit-stained beard hung down his chest. Very little flesh remained on the emaciated figure, bones showing clearly through the filthy skin. Near him on the wall was a large patch of black, frilly mushrooms. I could see some of them still gripped in his right hand, and his lips were stained black.
The encounter with the ghouls still sharp in my mind, I kept Rime’s point leveled at his chest. I kicked the sole of one of the corpse’s feet, and it didn’t move. Mithra sat nearby, observing. He seemed completely relaxed, clearly not perceiving any kind of threat here. I relaxed a fraction myself.
“I guess this is a Saprophyte. Looks like he ate the wrong mushroom,” I said and met Amber’s eyes over my shoulder.
I heard a ragged gasp of breath from the corpse and turned back quickly, my arm tensed up for the killing thrust.
The corpse lifted its head and opened bloodshot eyes. Just before I could thrust Rime through its chest, it spoke.
“Who are you guys?” the man asked, his open mouth revealing black teeth. Clearly this man wasn’t quite as dead as I had thought.
He sat up on his elbows, the very tip of Rime’s sharp point digging into his chest and drawing blood. He didn’t seem to notice, lifting his right hand to his mouth. I slapped the mushrooms out of his hand.
“Whoa, so violent,” the man said. “Not cool, man.”
“What are you doing here?” I demanded.
He looked longingly at the mushrooms on the wall nearby but didn’t dare to reach for them. When he looked back, he finally noticed my spear and the blood it had drawn. He sat back, easing away from the point.
“I’m just partaking in Myca’s bounty,” he said. “She will provide, you only have to look and you will find it. You look like you could use some of this, brother. So much violent energy swirling around in your aura right now.”
I withdrew my spear. Clearly this man wasn’t a threat to anyone but himself.
“Who is Myca?” I asked.
“The Lady of the dark and moist places, brother,” the man said, his voice becoming animated. “She who provides us with all we need. You see her bounty all around us.”
“The mushrooms?”
“The fruits of her love, provided to everyone, worthy or unworthy.”
“That sounds dirty,” Amber said and let out a giggle behind me.
The man’s eyes found her behind me and widened slightly. “So bright.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked and his attention returned to me.
The man picked up a single black mushroom from the floor nearby where it had landed and offered it to me. “This will help with that aura, brother. Take it.”
“Just get out of here,” I said. “You’re trespassing. Don’t make me hurt you.”
Mithra let out a low growl from the shadows nearby, slowly moving out into the light. The man scrambled to his feet, his back against the wall of the cavern. I knew that the hellion wolf didn’t consider the man a threat, he was just backing my play.
“Whoa, I don’t want any trouble, brother. Call off your beast!”
“Go,” I ordered, and he scrambled away. He moved surprisingly quickly and disappeared down a narrow passage. I scratched Mithra behind the ears in thanks.
“I appreciate you cleaning the riff raff out of my Catacombs, William,” Amber said once the Saprophyte had gone.
“I thought you said the guards patrolled down here regularly?”
“The Saprophytes like this cave. I think they call it the upper gardens. The guards are always clearing them out of here. Anyway, come on. The old man’s place is just ahead.”
The corridors we were walking down were still wide but seemed rougher somehow. Less polished, maybe. There was also a lot of branches, and I took careful note of our path. The last thing I wanted to do was get lost down here.
A few minutes later we rounded a corner and saw the entrance, an imposing steel door set into the stone. It was fifteen feet wide and twenty tall, built to accommodate the massive Frost Tortoise
. The door was hanging open.
“Oh no!” Amber released my arm and rushed forward.
The Duke had spared no expense on this door. It was thick, high quality steel with hinges hidden from the outside. Bolts on the top, bottom and side of the door would slide into deep, reinforced holes in the stone. A magical locking mechanism made sure that only the right people could get through. None of that had mattered.
I touched the remains of one of the bolts protruding from the door. The hardened steel was black and flaked away at my gentle touch. Something had caused the metal of the locking mechanism to rot and disintegrate into nothing. Once that was done, it was a simple matter of pulling the door open.
The chamber was immense, much larger than I had expected. It must have been forty yards across. The pond was a miniature lake with an island in the middle. Reeds grew up around the edges and the whole chamber was full of greenery, long grasses and small trees. The sunlight orbs hanging overhead lit the cave like a bright summer day, and the smell of healthy plants and water filled my nostrils.
For some reason I had been expecting everything to be frozen, but I guess that was like expecting Amber to live in a burning forest. She might enjoy it for a while, but at the end of the day she’d want her creature comforts.
“Old man, where are you! Grimjaw!” Amber yelled, approaching the edge of the pond. There was no sign of the Frost Tortoise.
She stood in a circle of yellowing, trampled grass near the edge of the pond, looking around. Despite the chamber’s size, there really wasn’t any place a huge Frost Tortoise could hide. Underwater, perhaps, but tortoises lived on land and not in water.
“He’d usually bed down here beside the pond,” she said. “He liked to freeze a fish in a block of ice and then eat it. I think he liked how crunchy it made them. Oh, where is he, Will?”
I could hear the panic in her voice and see it in her face.
I pulled her close, looking her in the eyes. “Hey, hey. We’ll find him. Don’t worry, we’ll find him.”
She visibly calmed a bit and nodded, biting her lip.
“Let’s look around and try to find some clue about who took him,” I suggested.
I was no thief-taker. I had no idea what to look for but tried gamely anyway. The grasses were high and concealed nothing much but the occasional half-eaten rotten fish or mound of tortoise manure. The pond was crystal clear but the only thing I could see in its waters were fish.
Mithra had been sniffing around the cavern and, as I stood looking into the pond, I heard him give a growling bark. It wasn’t the loud warning that dogs gave when defending their territory, but he definitely was trying to get my attention. It wasn’t a sound I had heard him make before. He was sitting on the edge of the trampled grass circle, looking expectantly at me.
I walked over to him and squatted down. He lowered his snout and sniffed at the matted grass in front of him before looking back into my eyes.
“What have you found?” I mused and pushed the grass aside.
“Have you found something?” Amber said from nearby where she was carefully combing through the tall grasses.
Under a thick layer of grass, I found a squat brown glass bottle, one usually used for alchemical potions. It was empty, the cork missing. More than half of the wax seal that had held down the cork was still there, firmly attached to the bottle. Depicted was what looked like the lower half of a tree wrapped in thorny vines.
I showed the bottle to Amber and she took it from my hands, frowning as she examined the seal.
“Fred.”
“Who the hell is Fred?” I asked.
Chapter 7
Twenty minutes later, we were back in Amber’s dining hall. In all this time, my companions hadn’t budged from the comfortable chairs around the table, simply drinking wine and chatting companionably. Lord Jancier was long gone, attending to whatever business he had. Ulmar looked pleasantly drunk while Anastasia simply looked relaxed.
“Grimjaw is gone,” I said. “Someone took him. The door was opened with magic that rotted the lock.”
“Who could have stolen that beast?” Ulmar sloshed a bit of wine on his tunic. “He’s as big as a house and ill-tempered from what I’ve heard.”
“Grimjaw is not ill-tempered,” Amber hotly retorted. “He’s a sweet old beast, and I’ll not have you speak ill of him, Ulmar.”
The dwarf raised a conciliatory hand. “My apologies, your grace.”
“Ulmar makes a good point, however,” Anastasia said. “It would be difficult to take Grimjaw somewhere he didn’t want to go. Is it possible Lord Mercer took him? He could have bound him and spirited him out of the catacombs somehow.”
“I checked on him two days ago and the old man was still there,” Amber said. “If Mercer stole him, he did it recently.”
“That doesn’t seem like something one of the Queen’s agents would do to the Duchess of Rarynwilde, does it?” I asked. “Your grace, if you would please tell them about the bottle and Fred?”
The bottle in question was sitting on the table in front of us. Whatever had been in it had a strong, earthy smell. Not an unpleasant one, but obviously some kind of potion.
“I recognize the seal on that bottle,” Amber said. “It’s Fred’s. He’s an herbalist and alchemist who lives in the Wyldwir forest. An odd man by all accounts, but his potions and tinctures are said to be very effective. “
“So, let’s go question this herbalist,” Ulmar said. “Maybe he knows who bought this potion.”
“I know Fred,” Anastasia said. ”He’s unlikely to be able to tell us who bought one of his potions. He sells a lot of them. I do know that he likes to collect secrets, however. He might be able to tell us what happened to Lord Mercer or where Grimjaw is now. It would be worth the ride to have a chat with him.”
It was all we had to go on, so we all soon agreed. Anastasia wrapped the potion bottle in a thick napkin from Amber’s table and placed it carefully in her pouch.
Lord Jancier entered the room and cleared his throat meaningfully.
Amber frowned at the man’s arrival. “Drat, I have business and must leave. Farewell to all of you. Ana, it was wonderful seeing you again. Ulmar, it was a pleasure to make your acquaintance. William, before you go, I’d like you to visit Garen, my court infuser.” She caught my eyes with her brilliant green ones. “I’ll instruct him to help you as he can.”
I bowed my head. “Your grace is too generous.”
“Nonsense,” she replied immediately. “I’ve found your visit to be very entertaining, and I hope to see you again soon.”
With a final smile to all of us, she swept out of the room with Lord Jancier trailing in her wake.
“She clearly likes you, William,” Ulmar said and grinned at me.
“Yes, clearly,” Anastasia said, and I thought I heard a bit of an edge in her voice. “Duchess Amber is a sweet girl, but she can be mercurial. Do not anger her or you may end up like that candle.”
The candle in question was still a puddle of wax on the surface of the Duchess’s dining table. I took Anastasia’s point.
A helpful servant led me to Garen’s workshop while Renault assisted Anastasia and Ulmar with provisioning. There had been some debate about spending the night in the palace, of but there was still plenty of light left and the Wyldwir wasn’t far.
Garen was a short, balding man with a ring of grey hair framing the shining skin on the top of his head. He looked up at the servant and I entering his shop with watering eyes, sniffling slightly. He was wearing a thick leather apron over plain workman’s clothes and had a heavy leather glove on his left hand.
The workshop itself was chaos. A series of wooden tables lined the walls, filled with all manner of what I could only describe as junk. The wall behind one of those tables was scorched black, a long mark reaching up in a jagged pattern.
Near the ceiling high above, windows let in beams of sunlight made visible by all the dust in the air. The servant gave me a shallow bow a
nd left me with the Infuser.
Garen sneezed and wiped his running nose with one sleeve. “I’m very sorry. Something afflicts me at this time of year, making my eyes and nose water.”
“Maybe it’s the dust? Why don’t you get the servants to clean up in here? It might help.”
“Oh no, that would be most unwise,” Garen said. “There are many dangerous things here and allowing the untrained to handle them even briefly would be irresponsible.”
I shrugged. If he wanted to be miserable that was his business. “Duchess Amber said that I should come and see you.”
“She did?” he said, looking puzzled. “I don’t recall receiving any messages about her sending a soldier to me. Who is your commanding officer?”
“I used to be in the Seventh Gar, but I’m sworn to the Queen now. I’m a Beast Mage.”
“A Beast Mage! You don’t say! How extraordinary.”
He rapidly searched his pockets, finally producing a pair of spectacles and put them on. They were round with thick copper rims and the lenses made his eyes enormous. He examined me carefully.
“So you are,” he said after a brief pause. “A Hellion Soldier. I suppose that is a good choice for a man like yourself who doesn’t fear fighting in close quarters with your hellions. Wait, is that Rime? Why do you have Rime, soldier? I believe that was the weapon of Dantaroth the Fallen, taken by Duke Warren. It should be with the rest of the trophies.”
“Ah, yes. Amber, I mean, her grace gave it to me. She said it was better I have it than it just collect dust.”
“Quite so,” he said. “It is a powerful item. It always pained me that it was little more than a decoration for the foolish courtiers to gawk at. With the Duke gone, I believe I might be the last to know the history of those trophies.”
“I’ll put it to good use, don’t you fear.”
“I believe you will, young man. What is your name, again?” he asked.
“My name is William, sir. The Duchess wanted me to come here. Can you help me with an infusion?”
“Clearly not,” he replied. “That shield is of good quality but is already infused with Gale. Rime has the Ice Wave infusion. That medallion with the Arcane infusion scarcely seems useful at all. I suppose you can use it to enhance that beast of yours? No, without something to infuse I cannot help you.”