by Dan Rabarts
Akmenos whipped the scroll case from his pocket and jabbed it in Hrodok’s direction, like some holy weapon. “They gave me this. A key. Why would they do that if they didn’t truly want me?”
Hrodok paled, eyes locked on the case. The hound growled, deep and low and hungry. “What did they say of this?”
“It’s a key, which I must decipher before sunrise.”
“A key to what?”
“To…” Akmenos tried to think. The encounter with the taur seemed so very long ago. “To the first steps, to—” He faltered, his stomach sinking. “To a choice.”
“What choice?”
“There are two,” he choked, “one is the Holy Flame. They’re good, they want me to join them. The other is called the Eternal Stair. They’re liars, cheats, that sort of thing. They’re trying to kill me.”
Hrodok was silent a long moment. Akmenos held his breath, though whether for fear of his brother, or the growling beast beyond the fire, or the shadow of so much hovering doom, he didn’t know.
When his brother spoke at last, his voice was calm and measured. “Akmenos, you know well of heroes, do you not?”
“Indeed.”
“Then you know everything a hero faces is a test, correct?”
“Sure.” Akmenos didn’t like where this was going.
“And one thing any good hero must be able to do, more than swing a sword or shoot an arrow or swoop up winsome lasses in his arms, is use his brain, yes?”
Akmenos eyed the case, the cryptic scrawls. “Aye.”
“So, were a hero to meet a foul creature, and that foul creature told that hero he must follow a course of action which will surely bring him to greatness, even if it meant walking into the jaws of a hundred hungrier, fouler creatures, what would the heroes in your stories do?”
Akmenos thought a moment. It was, he realised, not that rare a cliché. “The hero would defy the creature. He would take a different path and discover on the other side that the creature was in fact someone sent to help him.”
“Indeed. Because the sorts of heroes who follow the words of the untrustworthy into danger are not the sorts of heroes the mighty want at their right hand. They want the ones who can think for themselves, see danger coming, and avoid it before it kills them.”
Akmenos nodded slowly. It made a dreadful kind of sense. “You’re telling me that the taur who gave me this isn’t from the Holy Flame, but from the Eternal Stair, and the test is that I have to choose to seek the Eternal Stair, not the Holy Flame.”
Hrodok’s grin widened, dark gears spinning behind his eyes. He was scheming. Hrodok was never not scheming. But if Akmenos had learnt one thing from his brother, it was how to lie.
“Well, help me unlock the cipher so we can get started.”
Hrodok rocked a little on his heels. “You’re going to start the search for the Eternal Stair?”
Akmenos shrugged. “Might as well. Sounds better than spending my life banished to the kitchen.”
Hrodok eyed him warily. “One night on the run, and the world has changed you, brother. Profoundly.”
“Perhaps. I might just want a bigger kitchen.”
Hrodok’s face cracked into a grin again, the tension evaporating like poaching water left too long on the fire. He extended a hand for the scroll case. “By sunrise you say? We’d better get started.”
Akmenos nodded and handed his brother the case. Hrodok’s hands trembled as he began to read and twist the sections.
Yes, brother. Before our lies are revealed by the rising sun.
Chapter Fourteen
Hrodok, sitting cross-legged near the centre of the plinth, rotated the scroll case, his brother all but forgotten. Akmenos hovered nearby, holding a burning brand, ostensibly to give his brother light to read by but more likely to keep the hellhound at bay. It wasn’t necessary. A simple cantrip gave Hrodok sufficient light to study the riddle which would give him what Sianna had promised—the first step on the path to the Eternal Stair.
“First step,” he muttered aloud, and the puzzle’s sheer simplicity became clear. He was seeking the first step in a stairway. The way to the Eternal Stair was up, ever up, while the path to the Holy Flame was a downward spiral into the nine hells. So the scroll case was a set of steps.
Hrodok turned the case over until he was looking at the first lines of Hornung script, which read simply: “Go blind into the—”
Clawed fingers worked at the tumblers, pulling the second around so the Hornung text aligned itself one notch above the first tumbler, and then repeated this with the third and fourth sections. So simple, it would baffle the greatest of scholars and the dangerously heroic alike. As the last tumbler snicked into place, the scroll case began to vibrate gently.
Hrodok stood, a cold smile on his lips.
Akmenos was watching him, bewildered. This was nothing unusual. Akmenos was sometimes bewildered by turnips with amusing shapes. Hrodok proffered the humming key. “Come, make your choice.”
Akmenos dropped the brand and snatched back the case. His eyes flared as it thrummed in his fingers. The hellhound padded into the circle of firelight. Soon the beast wouldn’t be necessary. Dawn’s angry desert rays now scarred the sky, promising light and heat, and the moondog’s weakening.
Akmenos folded the scroll case into his chest. “I’ve decided.”
“You choose the Eternal Stair.”
Akmenos gave a barely perceptible nod. “As you say.”
Hrodok followed his brother, placing a hand on his shoulder as he knelt on the plinth and placed the end of the scroll case into a small depression in its centre. A thousand tiny carved glyphs sprang to light in the cold rock around their feet, burning magnesium hot for an instant. Hrodok cried out in anguish and surprise as the light seared into his retinas, then he was falling, blind, into darkness.
~
Tumbling, Akmenos wrapped his arms tight around the scroll case and hoped for the best. This wasn’t how it’d felt travelling through Scimitar’s magical portal. That had been a distinctly sideways motion, such that the very meat had been stretched from his bones in the process. This was, quite definitely, falling. He screamed, just a little, then remembered his brother was there and that they were supposedly being heroic. Heroes did not habitually scream. Better he reserve his vocal exertions until he was really in pain, assuming whatever short sharp stop rushing up to meet them from below didn’t deny him that small catharsis.
Then came the pain. His shoulder smashed through something hard and cold, which shattered beneath him. He screamed and clutched his arm, almost dropping the scroll case. Then his mouth and nose were nothing but bubbles as he plunged into icy water. He kicked out in panicky circles, trying to stroke for the surface, wherever the surface may be. His chest burned. Damn fool, wasting the last of his breath in a pathetic scream of pain. Some hero.
A hand grappled his shoulder—his injured shoulder, no less—and he was hauled upwards. He broke the surface, gasping and treading water. Hrodok’s face loomed out of the darkness, and Akmenos was strangely glad to see him, like never before. They bobbed together for a time, catching their breath, adjusting to the dark. From the echoes and slopping of water, they might’ve been in some underground lake, or a flooded cave. Of all the things he could’ve been dropped into the middle of, a big cold bath without so much as a bar of soap had to be among the worst.
“There.” Hrodok nodded. “A shore.”
“Sure is,” muttered Akmenos, his hilarity utterly lost on his brother. They kicked for a thin pale line far off in the gloom, Akmenos gripping the scroll case tightly. At last they reached the tiny strand, and Hrodok hauled Akmenos half-drowned from the water to lie heaving and sputtering on the cold sand. Akmenos’ shoulder throbbed where it’d smashed into whatever divided the black of the void from the cave interior. Somewhere along the way, he’d lost the taur’s waterskin, but thankfully all his knives remained securely wedged in his apron. So too were his salt and pepper grinders, though he
suspected the salt would be somewhat worse off for its impromptu immersion. Feeling less like a hero and more like a beached whale, Akmenos stood and hobbled up the dark passage after Hrodok, dripping and sore. Where had his brother got to, and what would the scroll case lead them into next? Had he cheated, getting Hrodok to solve the puzzle box? Would there be consequences? Only time would tell.
Feeling his way along the wall, Akmenos turned a corner and almost fell into another dark void. Catching himself, and thankful he hadn’t been rushing, he investigated his surroundings with hoof and claw. The passage opened up, a lip falling away before him. In the centre of the corridor a narrow stone bridge spanned a chasm, from which echoed the sound of running water. Ever so carefully, he inched along the bridge, stooping to clutch the low rail.
“Hrodok?” he called into the darkness, annoyed his brother might have gone on so far ahead and left him alone. Some hero that shirker was turning out to be. Probably teleported across the chasm using warlock magic, leaving his clumsy brother to hazard the bridge by himself. “Hrodok?”
There was a snap of uncoiling springs and the whip of tortured air. Too late, he tried to duck. A weight slammed into him, wrapped around him, knocking him to his rump. He thrashed against the thick mesh that had snared him, some sort of flexible metal that snapped and latched into itself as he struggled against it. With every motion it tightened, making breathing difficult.
“Right,” he called, lying still, “nice shot. I can see how this is going to go.” Whoever it was, if they’d wanted him dead it would’ve been a spear flying out of the black, not a net. “Now come tie me up or whatever it is you’re going to do, because I don’t feel like suffocating to death.”
A dozen smallish bodies stumped from the shadows and hefted Akmenos onto their shoulders. He was bounced and jostled, footfalls echoing in tight dark corridors. Judging by the scrape of metal against metal, the creatures carrying him were well-armoured and therefore probably well-armed, a combination which made Akmenos even less comfortable than he already was. Eventually, he was dumped like a sack of potatoes—although, had it been Akmenos doing the dumping, he would’ve tried not to bruise the potatoes. Apparently, his captors considered him neither as important, nor as fragile. Flames danced in his periphery—braziers, perhaps, or maybe a forge, though he couldn’t hear the ringing of hammers. He could, however, smell bread baking.
A mailed toe nudged him under the ribs, rolled him over. The toe’s owner grunted at him in a foreign tongue. Blinking, Akmenos studied his interrogator. He didn’t have to look up very far. “Sorry, I don’t speak Dwarf. No chance you might speak Hornung, is there? No? I guess you wouldn’t, would you, us being your mortal enemies and all that. What about Base, then?”
The dwarf snarled, quite incoherently.
“Oh good,” muttered Akmenos, as the dwarves moved in to unravel the mesh netting from his limbs. “Mighty hospitable of you. Any chance of a cup of tea, then? No?”
Manacles snapped around his wrists and ankles and chains rattled through iron rings in the wall. They dragged Akmenos across the floor and stretched him out painfully against the cold rock. He wasn’t going to be getting a cup of tea any time soon, which was a shame, because he really would’ve liked a cup of tea.
Two dwarves deftly divested him of his effects, knives and grinders and herbs and scroll case and onions alike, whilst the head guard paced before him with a look of smouldering hatred. As the guards stepped away, the officer moved in. He stared at Akmenos for a long moment, disgust written across his brow. Finally, he leaned close and growled out a few words in Base, like mince though a grinder. “I shall enjoy hanging you up to die, hornung.”
Akmenos shook his head. “I wouldn’t recommend that. If my father finds out, he’ll be rather cross.”
The dwarf choked back a snort. “If the father of every worthless hornung I’ve stuck on a spike got upset when I skewered them on the keep walls, I’d have been dead long ago.”
“Ah, but how many of the Cursemaster’s own children have you killed?”
The dwarf paused, rocked on his heels. “You’re Bane’s spawn?” He smiled, a crooked broken-toothed parody of mirth. Then he reached into the nearest brazier and extracted a glowing iron. Smoke curled from its ember-bright tip. “What is your name?”
Akmenos gulped. Much as he abhorred water, he also harboured a healthy dislike for red-hot pointy things. “Akmenos. And please, I’m no threat, not really, just in the wrong place at the wrong time and all that. I’m a chef, well, a cook, but I hope to be a chef one day. This is all really just one big misunderstanding, I assure you.” He leaned back against the wall, hard, as the bright smoking tip weaved closer, taunting, terrifying. “I don’t even know what I’m doing here, but I can tell you that whatever you’re cooking in that oven, you need more yeast. I can tell by the smell that it’ll be hard as old rock. Probably break a few teeth, I’d say. Give me an hour and a mixing bowl and a jar of honey and a pint of stout, and I can show you how to make a loaf that’ll rise like a cloud and taste like sunshine and mead and be a pleasure to eat. Like as not, you’ll even be able to cut it with a knife and won’t need that hammer you’ve got there just for breaking it open, like I guess you do now.” He shivered. The smoking iron hovered an inch from his nose.
The poker lowered, to reveal the head guard looking at him in genuine surprise. “You can tell all that, just by the smell?”
Akmenos nodded.
“And you say you can make bread using beer?”
Akmenos nodded again.
The guard shoved the iron back in the brazier. He barked orders as he strode away, and before Akmenos quite knew what was happening, his hands were free, and he was up to his elbows in dark nutty flour, yeast from his own pockets, and beer as black and bitter as old paint. A crowd of enthralled dwarves crowded around to see the hornung witch make his magic bread.
Someone, kindly, brought him a cup of tea.
Chapter Fifteen
Hrodok blinked from one shadowy ledge to the next, navigating the subterranean labyrinth until he spied daylight. Aided by a few distracting cantrips and quick translocations, he exited the tunnels into the streets of a sandstone fortress, and teleported onto a nearby tower, perching crouched on a spired minaret to survey his surroundings. Domes and crenellations spread out all around him, the fortress laid out below in tight, compact lines. Beyond the walls sprawled white desert and azure sky. Sharp bright rays fractured the firmament as sunlight shifted across distant mesas and glittering dunes. Hrodok frowned. The Crystal Desert? Sianna had mentioned the Crystal Desert as being part of the journey to find the Eternal Stair, but the first step? What about the Trickster of Qratan? He pushed the thought aside. Something was happening.
From the far side of the fortress came the snap of ballistae, the thump of artillery munitions crashing against stone. Hrodok blinked from tower to turret, closing in on the noise. Hundreds of dwarves scurried over dozens of war machines, arcs of white smoke cutting the sky as the weapons discharged. Vibrations shook the walls and clouds of dust burst skyward, incoming volleys slamming the fortress redoubts or soaring over the walls to fall inside the bailey.
Hrodok blinked higher, gaining a lofty perch atop a watchtower, shadowing his form from sight with another minor magic. The army arrayed against the dwarves was a shining sea of bright steel and snapping pennants, poised behind an armada of siege engines which ground slowly forward. Hrodok stared, transfixed by the simple colours that flew above the advancing forces. One flank was dominated by the white and blue of the Landarian national crest, and a multitude of House colours identifying the elvish lords who led their warriors into battle. On the other flank stood hordes of Hornung warriors, also flying their own colours. And at the back, where the general’s retinue overlooked it all, flew the black claw on a blood-red field.
The banner of the House of Bane.
~
Akmenos set the last ball of dough aside to prove, dusted the flour from his
hands, and turned to the expectant crowd. The dwarves seemed eager to eat the bread before it had even risen, much less been baked.
“So,” he said slowly, looking about for a bowl in which to wash his hands, “now we let the dough balls sit in a warm place, out of the draught, for about an hour, before they get another knead and another rise, then we can bake them. So we’ve got plenty of time to wash up and, oh, I don’t know, put on some soup?”
The dwarves appeared disappointed, which Akmenos didn’t take as a good sign, given the abundance of swords and axes they carried. “No? How about stew?”
Shortly thereafter, Akmenos was back to shivering against the wall, though he was no longer chained up. Apparently, the dwarves did not consider him a flight risk. The guard was now inspecting Akmenos’ few belongings; his knife apron laid out on the floor, the blades pulled from their snug sheaths; his salt and pepper grinders beside them, along with a half-dozen corked jars of herbs and spices and a small bottle of oil; and sitting rather awkwardly on its own, the scroll case. Everything was wet from his unexpected swim. Thankfully the cork caps on his grinders had kept most the water from his seasonings, but even so, Akmenos uncapped the grinders and spread the salt crystals and pepper corns out to dry on a pair of stray plates, flicking aside a few that were too damp to salvage.
The guard picked up the scroll case. “What is this?”
Akmenos kept his face blank. “A rolling pin,” he said, “for pastry. Shall I show you? I think your boys would like pie.”
The guard pointed at the text inscribed on the case. “Why does it have these words on it?”
Akmenos shrugged. “Decoration?”
The guard scowled, no longer a fellow gourmandiser, but a jailer once more. He put a finger on the first line of Dwarvish text. “Into the vaunted hallows follow, it says.” He moved his finger to the second line, the one immediately following the first line of Hornung text, where Hrodok had placed it. “—darkest window, black and white the key—” The guard shook the case. “This makes no sense.”