WINTER’S CROWN
By
Alexandra Little
CHAPTER ONE
“Your father wouldn’t like us going so deep,” my keeper Aerik said above me.
I was dangling from a very long rope next to a sheer wall of white stone. There was blackness to my right, my left, behind me, and below me. Thirty feet above us I could see Zarah, illuminated by a lantern, as she kept a watch on our jury-rigged system of ropes and hooks. Aerik and I had our own lanterns, which hung from our belts and cast distorted shadows on the wall.
The tough rope ran through a hook on a leather harness, which was secured around my waist and legs. Both rope and harness were hard to obtain. Apparently, being the Lord Governor’s daughter made it easy to bribe a quartermaster officer into conveniently misplacing some of his stock.
I loosened my grip on the rope until I started to slide downward. I made sure the rope was scraping loudly against my gloves before I muttered: “My father doesn’t like a lot of things.”
Aerik came sailing down next to me, his grizzled hair and beard rippling in the wind. “What was that?” he asked.
“Nothing.”
Aerik slowed until he matched the speed of my descent. “Speaking about your father and your little adventures into these ruins—”
“Don’t pretend you don’t enjoy these ‘little adventures’.”
“This is the closest to climbing ship’s rigging that I’ve gotten in the six months we’ve been in this frozen territory, so I am enjoying it. But Eva—”
“I see the ground.” Just in time, too. My father was not my first choice for a conversational topic.
There it was, about ten feet below us. Our ropes just reached the bottom, the few remaining feet coiling haphazardly on the floor. I loosened my grip and slid the rest of the distance. The thud of my landing and the jangling of my equipment belt resonated in the blackness, carrying on until they were the faintest of echoes. Even then the echoes never seemed to quite end.
“This place must be massive.” Aerik landed next to me.
I detached myself from the rope and took a few steps into the darkness. I unhooked my lantern and turned down its flame.
“Eva, we do need to talk about your father.”
“Not right now.”
I walked farther into the cave. My shadow grew longer and less defined in front of me until I was nearly out of the range of Aerik’s lantern.
I didn’t know what I was looking for.
Across from me, at what seemed like hundreds of feet, was a faint light. Not the orange glow of a flame, but a pure white.
Aerik hurried up behind me. “I’m going to lose you one of these times if you keep walking off like that.”
“There’s a light that way.”
“I can’t see anything.”
His words twisted my stomach into knots. I saw the light clearly, and Aerik had better eyesight than I did. But down here, I found things first. I had found the entrance to the ruins on a hunch. I had known where to find the tunnels, the rooms, and the inscriptions. I had translated the inscriptions without ever having seen the language before. I was almost certain I knew how to speak it, too, but uttering the sounds that came to me seemed too sacred of a thing for me to do.
I hadn’t told Aerik that. He’d think I’d gone mad. I probably had.
The white light grew brighter. It ran narrow and long up the wall. As we got closer, the wall surrounding the light became two tall doors, built out of the same white stone. There were no handles or decoration, and the doors were thick. One was slightly ajar inward. There looked to be just enough room to fit through.
“Careful, Eva.”
I eased between them, shifting my belt and vest around as my tools caught on the edges. If I had been wearing my winter coat with its thick furs and wool, I wouldn’t have fit at all. A cool wind caught at my hair and pulled strands free of its braid.
For a moment the light blinded me. Slowly, everything came into view.
It was like a cathedral nave. A large, white cathedral, with thick columns that rose far above and turned into soaring arches. It stretched out forever in front of me, disappearing into more darkness.
The light came from overhead. Far above, at the top of the arched ceiling was a large hole. Perfectly circular, it bore through a thick layer of rock before opening to the sky. On the floor beneath it, directly in front of me, was a large scattering of shattered glass. My breath puffed out in front of me now that we were back in the light and the cold.
“None of the prospectors ever found this,” Aerik said behind me, his voice tight as he squeezed through the doors. It took a lot to impress Aerik, a man who had spent 35 years of his life sailing the oceans and docking at exotic lands, but there was reverence in his voice.
“Have they been this far up into the mountains?” I asked, but I didn’t pay attention to any answer.
Aerik walked into the center, his boots crunching on the glass. The floor itself was covered in designs. There were numerous circles, many of them overlapping each other. There seemed to be one large central circle positioned directly below the skylight, and which the rest were centered around.
There were many paired circles, with one larger circle surrounding another, with maybe only a hands’ length of space between them. These didn’t overlap with any others, and were large enough that I could stand inside of them with room to spare. Between the two circles was the faintest sheen. From a distance it looked to be some metallic dust, most likely the adamant that had brought the Empire here. But as I drew closer I could see that the sheen was in the shape of the elegant writing of the ruins. It was very faint, and I had trouble determining the letters. It said something of a shield…or perhaps a wall. The two words in the old tongue were very similar.
“What technology could have built this?” Aerik asked as he turned in a slow circle, his face lifted towards the sky.
“Something much more skilled than us,” I murmured as I moved toward the right, stepping around the circles and their writing. Beyond the columns there was a wall, and set in it was a monumental set of doors, carved out of the same pale stone as the rest of the place. I could see a long inscription chiseled across both. The inscription was hurried; there were no graceful curves, no perfectly aligned lettering, and no smooth finish. But there were no mistakes either. There was a seal chiseled beneath the words, overlapping both doors, with a crudely drawn image of a dragon in the center.
I wanted to turn and run away. We shouldn’t be here.
“What does that mean?” Aerik came up beside me.
I found it hard to reply. “ ‘Evil exists beyond. Do not open the door.’ Essentially.”
“Do you believe it?”
Yes I did. “No, but let’s be a little respectful of the people who made it.”
Habit had me reaching into my belt pouch and pulling out a charcoal stick and a piece of tracing paper. I would copy them now and make a better drawing when we returned. But I couldn’t bring myself to trace the symbols.
Aerik was a man from the South. He was born along the sea, worked on the sea and, until my mother died a year ago, had helped command one of the largest merchant fleets in the Empire. He was a superstitious person like all Southerners, but his superstition was limited to carrying turtle bones in his pocket for good luck. Mother had been a Southerner too, but my father was a Northerner. Belief ran deeper in his blood than it did in Aerik’s. Aerik thought I wandered these ruins out of curiosity. I didn’t know how I had found the ruins when nobody else had. I didn’t know how I had known the language. And I didn’t know why I kept coming back. It wasn’t something that a rub of turtle bones was going to explain.
I took off my gloves and tucked them into my be
lt. I just barely skimmed my fingers over the seal. It felt…slick. Oily. Unclean.
There might not be evil behind the doors, but something was there.
I pulled my hand away, and folded up my paper. This was too much. I could read an unfamiliar language, yes, and the sounds of that language sometimes came unbidden to me. The only thing that kept me running away from such strangeness was that exploring the ruins kept me as far away from my father as I could get in this frozen place. As soon as I reached my majority I could leave for good—until then, the ruins called to me.
But not this time.
“Will you bring a few more men down here, crack open the doors?” Aerik asked.
It wasn’t even going on the map. The door, the hall, the entrance—nothing was going to be recorded. It was going to be forgotten. “No. I’ve changed my mind. Let’s go back.”
“Really?” Aerik approached the door. He took off his gloves and rubbed his hand over the seal. I waited for something, for some sign that he felt what I felt, but there was nothing. “It’s not the prettiest drawing we’ve come across, but it has it its own charm. And this hall—the skylight—how can we not explore this?”
“Not today. I’m tired.”
“You’ve never been before.” Aerik let his hand fall from the seal and moved back under the skylight. “You can’t be having second thoughts about what your father thinks of all this. Well, what’s this? Eva, come here.”
I forced myself away from the doors. I wanted to open it, yet I didn’t. Don’t open the door, that’’s what the inscription said. Why direct me to find the door, only to keep me out of it? Two directions. Two instincts? One to draw me to the ruins, the other one to tell me I’ve gone too far?
I picked a fine time to start being concerned with my urge to be in the ruins. Maybe I should try Aerik’s turtle bones after all. He’d be pleased if I asked him for some.
“Eva.”
I found him standing at the edge of the darkness, looking down the nave. “What is it?”
There was a layer of dust on the floor, away from the skylight and the wind that came through it. Most of it was smooth, a brown-gray carpet spread over the stone floor, but where Aerik knelt it had been disturbed. “Footprints,” Aerik said. “Of a rather large boot,” Aerik aimed his lantern into the darkness. “A series of boots, coming and going. You’re not the first to discover this place.”
“Looters.” It was a growing trade, the closer the Empire came to Elf territories. This was not good. Not good at all. I had to find the other entrance, find it and block it off. Rockslides and avalanches weren’’t uncommon up here—it wouldn’t be hard to bribe the quartermaster again, to get a little bit of black powder from him. If there was a rockslide, whoever had been here wouldn’t be able to dig his way back in, not for a long time.
“They go off quite a distance, farther than we can see with these lanterns. We’re going to have to bring other men down here to chart this place. Eva, hey.” Aerik grabbed my arm.
Yes, black powder would do it. Or maybe those new sticks of dynamite, which everyone in the mines was excited about. But that would be harder to get. I don’t think I had money enough to bribe the quartermaster for that.
“Eva!” he shook me.
I looked back at him and realized I had stepped past him and into the darkness.
“We can’t go now. We need lanterns, torches, your ropes and chalk to map the area.”
Aerik needed the lanterns. I didn’t. But it would be useless to go running after them now.
“You’re being very strange about all of this. Look, if whoever’s down here has looted relics, we’ll find them easily enough when they try to sell them. They have to be mining men, or supply men. You can’t simply send things south without being checked.”
“Fine,” I brushed off his hand. “Yes, fine. Let’s go back.”
“We’re going to have to talk about more than your father when we get back to the fort.”
Probably. I had to tell him that there was more than curiosity bringing me here. Maybe he wouldn’t believe me, but I knew he wouldn’t tell anyone else about it. Or, if I thought he would, I could make him swear an oath. He took his oaths seriously, which was why he was up here with me and not on his merchant ships. He could have been admiral of the fleet – of my fleet – but he had sworn to my mother that he would look after me if she died.
I stepped around the spread of glass, Aerik following behind. Yes, I’d tell Aerik, then get some black powder.
I passed by the doors, let myself look at the dragon in the seal. I didn’t have to be close to it now to feel its slickness. If there was a way to block that door without damaging it…
I heard them behind us. Distant laughter, stumbling steps. “Aerik.”
He turned to look where I was looking, back into the darkness of the nave. “What is it?”
“The looters. They’re coming.”
“I don’t hear—”
I grabbed his arm and dragged him back to where we had come in. I slipped between the doors and pulled Aerik with me. Then I turned around to watch.
There were four men. Under their worn and abused fur-lined cloaks were the plain gray tunies and trousers of the miners. They came prepared. They carried pickaxes, shovels. Heavy hammers hung from their belts. They had a bundle of unlit torches, and carried unfilled canvas sacks. Definitely looters. Their faces were familiar, but I had seen many faces at the Fort and in the eating halls. Their clothes were smudged with soot like many who worked in the mines, and they were built strong with the labor of it.
“That’s the one,” the tallest of the four said. “Over here. Looks like the last one we found some good stuff behind.”
Aerik leaned over me, his chin resting on my shoulder.
The looters, led by the tallest, crunched over the glass and reached the sealed doors. “What do you think, Marden? If we can get that drawing and writing in one solid piece, that might even be worth something?”
A short, broad-shouldered man stepped up to the door. “They’re damn tall. We’d need to crack them open—if they even open, mind—see how they’re hinged, lay them down, then break them up that way.”
“Too much effort,” the tall one said. “Let’s just see if they open and go from there.”
“Right.” The short one—Marden—pulled a crowbar from his belt and wedged it between the doors, right in the middle of the seal.
I stepped forward.
“Eva, don’t.” Aerik’s voice was a harsh whisper in my ear, but I was already squeezing back through. He grabbed my arm again, held tight, but I pulled away. Aerik’s grip wasn’t strong enough to hold me against this.
I had to stop them. “Don’t break it open.”
Marden halted. They all turned and stared. “Who the hell are you?” the tall one asked.
“It’s the Governor’s girl,” one of the others said.
I heard Aerik come up behind me.
The four looked at each other, and came to some unspoken consensus. The tall one took a hammer from his belt, the other two pulling out crowbars.
All I had on my belt was a prospector’s hammer, a chisel, a horsehair brush, and a rather small trowel. Aerik didn’t have anything better.
We were definitely going to have to talk about these ruins and my impulses.
The one called Marden wrenched his crowbar from the doors.
The seal cracked.
From somewhere—distant, an echo, behind the door yet all around us—came the faint grinding of stone against stone. It slowly echoed into quiet.
A chill in my heart stopped me from moving any further. Nobody else dared to move either.
Stone cracked at the base of the doors. Thin fractures ran outward, spreading under the feet of the four looters, reaching the shards of glass.
I retreated slowly, reaching for Aerik.
“What is this?” the one who named me Governor’s girl asked. The four of them backed away from the fractures.
/> “It shouldn’t have done that,” Marden said, his voice shaking slightly. “It’s just a seal.”
The grinding came again. The two massive doors shifted against each other.
“It’s unstable,” the tall one said. “The whole place could come down on us.”
The tremor of the door seemed to travel up the wall, knocking dust and debris free.
“We have to get out of here,” Marden was already backing away.
“What about them?” the fourth one of their group pointed at us.
“Back the way we came,” Aerik whispered in my ear. “Quickly.”
The tremor reached the skylight. A small slide of snow fell in. The four scattered as it landed on the shards, sending a puff of powder and glass outward. Then a large section of stone half my height fell. Aerik yanked me farther back as it crashed down, cracking the floor and splitting into chunks. Small pieces of stone shot out and stung my face and neck.
The doors split open, groaning as they swung forward only a fraction of an inch.
We all held still. I clung to Aerik and waited for the rockslide that I had hoped for earlier, waited for the entire place to come down around us. But there was nothing else.
Except a new flow of air. A warm, slick breeze that came from the darkness between the now-opened doors.
Aerik shuddered. “What is it you said,” Aerik whispered. “About the evil existing beyond?”
The light dimmed, leaving the orange cast of our lanterns to illuminate the hall. I looked up—the sky had filled with gray storm clouds. A dry wind came through the skylight, carrying the lightest dusting of snow. But the oppressive slickness was still there.
The blackness from the door seemed to creep forward. It followed no logic of shadows but crept across the floor and doors in tendrils, curling this way and that like black ink in water. The tendrils seemed to avoid the seal on the door, instead circling around it. They crept around Marden too, reaching out to curl around his legs and torso. He didn’t seem to notice.
“Aerik,” I whispered. “Step back, stand in the circles.”
“What?”
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