by S E Meliers
He was working hard against the heavy mist, thin air and buffeting winds to gain altitude. She was glad for the cloud cover as she did not want to look down again - when she had done so earlier, seeing the details of the land reduced to specks was disturbing. She was normally a good flyer, it being a pre-requisite to being a dragon-mate, but this was a height beyond anything previously experienced. She could feel the muscles of his back between her thighs straining with each wing stroke, and he had not spoken for some time, all his attention focussed on flight. She held on tight, curled over her rounding belly protectively, and cursed Calico.
‘I see a cave,’ Ember spoke suddenly, startling her. ‘There is not room enough to land. I will need to land above, and we will need to climb down.’
‘Very well,’ she said her lips numb and foreign feeling from the cold.
He settled onto a ledge only just wide enough for them. The ledge was strange – not rough and ragged, but evenly surfaced and regular in shape. As he changed into his man-shape and dressed, she brushed the snow aside with the toe of her boot, though the wind tried to pat it back into place. ‘This is paved,’ she said wondering. ‘It is like a balcony. Look, there are even a few broken pieces of a balustrade at the edges.’
‘Be careful,’ he said taking her elbow firmly and leading her back from the lip of the ledge. ‘You are correct: it is not a naturally formed ledge and, as the crumbling balustrade gives evidence of, it is faltering under the strain of the eons since its manufacture.’
She shuddered and let him pull her back. ‘It would be a long way to fall.’
‘I would catch you, of course,’ he replied his attention turning to the way down, ‘but I only have one change of clothes and they would be destroyed in the change, thus we would have to return to the ground and try again another day as even I would suffer the cold here if I were without coverings. There are stairs. Stay close.’ He maintained his hold on her elbow, guiding and steadying her passage across the slippery ice and snow covered balcony. A stair, cut into the mountain and paved, as the ledge had been, by an ancient people lost to history, went up and down from their perch.
The outer edge of the stairs was balustrade with ornately carved stone peculiarly and painstakingly scallop edged, broken in places, and rocky in others. ‘I would not trust that,’ Ember warned as her hand came to rest on the rail. He looked glorious caped in fur with his blood-red hair speckled with white down his back, she thought enviously; no doubt her nose was pink and her skin blotchy and the thick furs would make her look squat and round instead of majestic as they did him.
‘I wonder what is up?’ she looked at the steep incline then shrugged. ‘I am glad we are going down, however, as it is hard enough to breathe without also climbing steep stairs.’
‘I will go first,’ he said, ‘so if you stumble, I can catch you. Stick close to the mountain wall.’
‘Yes, Ember,’ she hunched her face into the fur around the neck of her cloak in an attempt to warm her chilled nose and lips and concentrated on putting one foot after another on the shallow steps. Her shoulder dragged against the mountain wall and she realised it was carved. ‘Hold a moment, please, Ember, I want to…’ she dug her fingers into the snow, working it free. ‘Oh,’ there was a figure carved into the mountain about the size of her arm from elbow to wrist and the relief around it as deep as her index finger to the topmost knuckle. It interacted with figures on either side of it, so the edges of its arms were lost under the snow even after her excavation. The surface of the figure was smoothly polished, with geometric detail in the carved cloth it wore and the necklace or collar around its neck. The hair was pocked with a regularity that indicated it to be deliberate – perhaps to indicate curl.
‘We must not linger,’ Ember entreated. ‘It is too cold for you.’
‘You are right,’ she agreed. She was freezing. ‘It is just beautiful.’
‘Ancient,’ he agreed. ‘A lost treasure. I am intrigued as to how your friend knew this was here, and what the value is of this statue she has asked us to obtain for her.’
‘I am increasingly so,’ she let him help her down the rest of the stairs to a narrow path leading to a regular opening in the mountainside. ‘This is also not natural,’ she stated the obvious. The opening was framed by two rounded pillars of stone, the doorway double wide and rectangular. The lintel had been carved with a language lost to snow. ‘Can you make out enough of that writing to read it?’ she asked him.
‘Yes, and no,’ he replied, frowning. ‘I can make it out, but it is not any language that dragonkind know. It must be very, very old. We should go in, out of this wind.’ The daylight only extended a short way into the doorway – enough that she could see that the floor was even, dusted with in-blown snow and ice, paved, and that the room beyond was wider than its entrance. ‘I will go first,’ he added, stopping her advance. ‘The very ancient often set securities of places they deigned sacred.’
‘Securities?’ she asked with a worried frown.
‘Sometimes a physical trap such as a projectile that is launched when triggered by an errant step, sometimes the security is more arcane of nature,’ he was concentrating on the doorway. ‘It can be dangerous to intrude on these places.’
‘Maybe we should not,’ she hesitated. ‘This favour for Calico is just that – a favour. It should not involve danger. It is not important enough for me to risk harm to you or myself.’
‘Ah,’ he threw her a quick and wicked grin over his shoulder. ‘That is true, but… this favour is very diverting and I would like to see it through to its completion. I will keep you safe,’ he assured her, ‘just stay behind me and do not touch anything without checking with me first.’
She drew a deep breath and sighed it out as she considered. ‘Very well,’ she agreed with amused resignation. ‘But you take no risks Ember Dragon. We,’ she patted her belly, ‘would not survive long without you, remember, stuck here on this mountain.’
He pulled her in for a quick kiss before returning his scrutiny to the doorway with a grin. ‘Wonderful,’ he said leading the way into the stone framed entrance. ‘This was a place of great importance to someone for it to be so finely wrought. Many lives would have been lost in constructing this temple so high up the mountain.’
‘It is sad that they gave their lives to this place for their God, and now the God and they are forgotten, crumbling into the frost,’ she murmured.
‘Pause a moment and let your eyes adjust to the dim within,’ he cautioned.
‘Do you see a trap?’
‘No, but there are bodies,’ he was intrigued.
‘Killed by a trap?’ her vision was not anywhere as acute as his own, and slower to adjust to the dimly lit chamber. She could make out shapes along the otherwise even floor that could be bodies. The walls of the chamber were beautiful – tiled in warm reds and golds in patterns pleasing and impressive. She wondered if the snow covered floor featured similar designs. She could just make out the form of a sword, and some other items of weaponry scattered on the ground just beyond where the light from the doorway fell.
‘More likely the cold,’ he replied calmly. ‘We may proceed a few steps.’ As they moved forward he leant to the side suddenly and swept a sword from the floor in a fluid motion. She jumped and tensed ready.
‘Is the weapon still sound after so long and in the cold?’ she asked under her breath anxiously when attack was not immediate.
‘It is a spelled blade,’ he replied calmly. ‘It has preserved due to the magic imbued in it. I have not seen one so powerful in a very long time.’ He paused a moment to examine it with a small, pleased smile. ‘I have always wanted one for my hoard.’
‘So you picked it up because you wanted it for your hoard, not because you felt you might need it?’ her skin crawled with alertness, every shadow threatening attack - his sudden seizure of the weapon had alarmed her beyond breathing. ‘Dragons,’ she shook her head and sighed. ‘I was terrified attack was coming any moment,
Ember!’ she scolded. ‘I almost wet myself.’
‘I apologise,’ he was repentant. ‘It was not my intention to alarm.’
‘Hmmm,’ she felt better now that he was armed, anyway. ‘Shall we keep going?’
‘Yes. How well can you see?’
‘Not very well, though my eyes are adjusting. Why?’
‘The snow does not reach so far into the chamber,’ he pulled a face she could not interpret. ‘And it appears that there was a great battle in this chamber, with many dead. The fighting was vicious. The bodies are frozen, so decay has been slow. You would probably find the sight disturbing.’
She could make out the forms in the dimness. ‘I think my imagination is painting vivid detail where my eyes cannot see,’ she shuddered and drew closer to him. ‘Did they fight each other, or a peril of the chamber?’
‘It is difficult to tell,’ he admitted. ‘Their wounds are… vicious. But a man can do terrible things with his weapons, and their weapons are impressively barbaric.’
‘What do you see, besides the bodies?’ she asked. ‘Is the chamber deep? Is there anything in it? Can you see an altar? Can you see the statue?’
‘There are several items of note,’ he looked around, his posed relaxed, but the sword was held ready at his side, ‘besides the bodies. The chamber has a leg off to the left which has a sunken area in the floor. The edges of the sunken square are padded with cushions, and there is a table in the centre of the area. It looks like a meeting place or perhaps an area in which to meet with visitors to the temple, or partake of a meal. There is a curtain strung across the area, pulled back and tied to the wall. There is also a doorway to the end of the main chamber, with pedestals on either side and closed chests of the size that often contain gold due to the weight. The back wall has a recess in which a liquid is evident very similar to that of the mosaic chamber that the Dveygar have uncovered. They would be very interested by this temple, I think.’
‘We should light it, then I can see better.’
‘I would do so, except that in seeing better you would also see the remains of the warriors who died in this chamber,’ he hesitated.
‘Is it bad bad or just bad?’
‘Nearest to us is a man with a spiked mace lodged in the back of his head. Against the wall there is a man who has lost half his face to a sword or an axe blow. You can see his tongue sitting at rest in his mouth through the hole where jaw and cheek have been torn away. There is another man who has been almost severed in two by a strike from behind. His spinal column and ribs can be seen along with internal organs that are strewn across the floor joining the two halves-’
‘Enough! It is bad bad,’ she swallowed hard. ‘Maybe we will try the door.’
‘That may be best. Stay close,’ he guided her across the floor between obstacles that she did not want to examine too closely. In front of the door, she strained her eyes to pick details out of the deepening darkness. ‘There is a door in the doorway,’ he said considerate of her limited eyesight and curiosity. ‘The material used is not wood or stone. The doorframe is stone with a wooden jam. Fascinating. I have seen this before. It is the cured guts of a creature stretched to almost transparency. They have fixed it between thin metal supports.’
‘Sounds disgusting,’ she wrinkled her nose.
‘It would actually be quite pretty, I imagine. When a room on either side is lit, it would shine through these panels. The glow setting off the capillaries and flaws in the membrane would be very effective.’
‘If you say so,’ she shuddered. ‘Stretched gut as furnishings seems… wrong to me.’
‘Stretched gut is very useful,’ he shrugged. ‘It can be used as bladders for liquids, for sausage casings, bow strings, the strings of instruments… Regardless. The door should not be hard to open.’
‘So…’ she gestured to the door. ‘Should we open it?’
‘Doorways are infamous triggers of projectile devices,’ he explained. ‘It would be best for us to step to one side. And you should squat down behind me to make yourself a smaller target.’
‘If the door is made of gut, maybe we should just cut our way through, rather than moving the door and possibly setting off a projectile weapon?’ she suggested.
‘An interesting idea,’ he considered. ‘But we will do it my way for two reasons. Firstly, because this door is an artefact and it would be a terrible thing to destroy it, and secondly it is more entertaining my way,’ he flashed an irreverent grin.
‘Dragons,’ she snorted. ‘Very well, proceed,’ she stepped to the side and squatted as instructed.
He seized the metal door frame. ‘It is a sliding door – sliding into a cavity within the wall. The perfect design for a projectile trap as the door frame entering the cavity could depress a trigger,’ he said giving it a test pull. ‘Stay where you are.’ He counted under his breath, and on three pulled the door open and stepped neatly back to place himself between her and any projectile from that chamber.
There was a whoosh from inside, and light spilled out into the hall throwing ghastly shadows over a gruesome corpse on eye level with her squatting position. Praise gagged and turned away. ‘Is that it?’ she asked after a long moment.
‘Appears to be so,’ he conceded sounding a little affronted. ‘Apparently the door trigger sets the internal lighting system to blaze.’
‘Well, there was a door trigger, so you were right about that,’ she offered his male and dragon dignity a reprieve.
‘Yes,’ he accepted. ‘I was.’
‘What is within the chamber?’ she asked as he helped her to stand from her squat.
‘Stay behind me,’ he cautioned as they neared the open doorway.
‘Yes, Ember Dragon,’ she grumbled, peering around him. ‘Oh,’ her mouth hung open as she looked within the chamber.
‘Yes, indeed,’ he sounded awed – an achievement for the jaded dragons. ‘I suddenly understand the motivation for the battle beyond,’ he said. The room was clad in gold. The walls and floors were tiled in it, the seats arrayed before the central altar sculpted of it, the cloth upon the altar woven of it, and, of course, the altar was carved of it. And, atop the altar, in the prized position, a round bellied bald god carved of common, everyday granite stone.
Gallant
Cinder was in fine form, moving amongst his men tankard in hand, celebrating the fall of Guarn. A worried looking Guarnish harper sat in the corner with his harp, looking a little worse for wear due to an earlier scuffle where he had received a slap or two for refusing to play. The Guarnish maid servants were similarly abused; faces bruised and dresses torn as they struggled to serve the invaders whilst failing to fend off their approaches. He saw a platter clatter to the floor spilling its contents onto the stones as a maid was bent over a table and her skirts flipped over her head. It had happened often enough during the celebration that she did not scream.
There would be Shoethalian bastards sired in Guarn this night.
Ironwood sat at the head table to the right of Cinder’s empty chair, deep in drink and with a noble Guarnish woman in his lap. He hoped Ironwood bound her to the bed before sleeping, for she had the face of one who would stab an unconscious man gleefully, and the captain would be needed for future battles if Cinder was to succeed.
Cinder’s laughter rang out above the raucous celebration, and for a moment, Gallant saw in him the young Lord he had first known, before the unification of Shoethal. When he had first been assigned to Cinder’s castle, and the young Lord had been a shining beacon of promise to the disillusioned young Priest. Handsome, strong, well educated, skilled at battle and popular, he had seemed the perfect figurehead for a better world. Gallant and he had become friends, and the Priest had encouraged the Lord to think of the world beyond his own holdings. The young Lord had still mourned his lost love and child, and was primed to direct that grief and anger towards Gallant’s pet project – a Shoethal unified under one Prince and one God.
Gallant had always intended t
o have a seat of power in the new Shoethal, but he had begun as a romantic, hoping for a strong and noble leader for the shattered country. Cinder was not strong enough or noble enough to be left to rule alone; but nor was he malleable enough to be the face of the crown whilst Gallant acted as the mind. The more success Cinder had, the more Gallant became aware of the flaws in his chosen figurehead.
But, on nights like tonight, Cinder reminded him of those first shining days full of promise and hope, when the then Lord had seemed like a Prince of legend to the disfigured Priest.
Gallant sighed. He had to get the Prince to meet the Lady Patience on the road between Amori and Truen. The timing had to be perfect – too early and Prairie may be unsuccessful in her shot, or Cinder himself might be injured, too late and Patience’s chance of injury and death, and therefore the injury or death to the babe she carried, increased. But it would be worth it – he wanted to see that bitch of a Hallow dead, wanted it so much the thought of her blood made him hard.
‘Gallant!’ Cinder roared out above the revelry. He had made his way back to the head table and was grinning at Ironwood, thoroughly enjoying his captain’s elevation to Lord. ‘Gallant!’
‘Yes, my Prince,’ Gallant stepped into the centre floor, bare of tables, as a hush fell over the gathering, curiosity piqued as to the Prince’s summoning of the out of favour Priest. Gallant bowed as he drew close to the head table. ‘How may I assist you?’
‘By performing a wedding!’ Cinder was pleased, crowing with delight. ‘Marry Ironwood to the lovely Lady- ’ he paused, blank, but not perturbed by his lack of knowledge.
‘Mercy,’ Ironwood supplied, contentedly.
‘To the Lady Mercy of Guarn,’ Cinder clapped his friend on the shoulder.
Lady Mercy, a second or third cousin of the Lords of Guarn who had suddenly found herself elevated to heir to the castle, was not as pleased by the Prince’s demand for marriage as Ironwood, bouncing her on his trunk-like leg and holding her pinned there with heavily muscled arms, was. Gallant would have to change the tradition of ascertaining the brides’ consent, he decided, as he did not think she would give it. ‘It would be my honour, my Prince,’ he declared with more hearty enthusiasm then he felt. He ran through the ceremony with the amendment of asking the Prince’s consent instead of the bride’s, and the gathering cheered at the conclusion when Ironwood kissed the Lady lasciviously - although she was less than receptive.