Dark Sun: Prism Pentad 2 - The Crimson Legion (11 page)

Caelum walked into the next open area, a huge hallway running the perimeter of the keep.
The floor was arranged in a pattern of polished black and white squares. At even spaces
along the walls, tall white columns supported the vaulted ceiling above. Between each set
of arches was a mural painted directly onto the wall.

Neeva stepped over to the nearest and inspected it closely. “You don't exaggerate, do you
Lyanius?” she asked. “When you said hair, I didn't imagine anything like this!”

Rikus joined her. The painting before Neeva portrayed a dwarf dressed in a full suit of
golden plate armor, a huge war-club cradled in his arms. From beneath his golden crown
cascaded a huge mop of unruly hair that hung well past his shoulders. That was not the
worst of it, either. His face was lost beneath a thick beard that started just below his
eyes and tumbled in a tangled mass clear down to his belly.

“Come along!” ordered Lyanius. “I didn't bring you here to mock my ancestors.”

He hustled them down the hall, Caelum following close behind. As they passed the other
murals, the mul saw that they, too, portrayed grossly bearded dwarves. The painting
usually depicted dwarves standing in the somber halls of dimly lit keeps or in the dark
chambers of some vast cave.

When he reached the last mural in the line, Rikus stopped. He had no doubt that the
picture depicted the guardian of the city, King Rkard. Like the figure that had met them
at the city gate, the dwarf in the painting had golden-yellow eyes and wore black plate
mail trimmed in silver and gold. His helm was crowned by a jewel-studded crown of strange
white metal. In his hands, the picture king even held a battle-axe identical to the one
carried by the gate-guardian. The weapon's serrated blade was flecked by tiny sparkles of
light.

As interesting as the king's picture was, it was the background that fascinated the mul.
Behind Rkard, the ground sloped down a gentle hill blanketed by the green stalks and red
blossoms of some broad-leafed plant Rikus did not recognize. At the bottom of this slope,
a wide ribbon of blue water meandered through a series of lush meadows. In those fields
grew food crops of every imaginable color and shape. In the far background of the
painting, the river finally disappeared into a forest of billowing trees ranging in color
from amber to russet to maroon. Behind this timberland rose a mountain range, its peaks
and high slopes covered strangely with white.

"Rkard is the king who led our ancestors into the world, explained Lyanius.

“What world?” Rikus gasped, his eyes still fixed on the painting.

“
This
one, of course,” Caelum answered, also studying the painting. “Don't let the mural mislead
you. The artist must have been given to a certain amount of embellishment. Perhaps that
green land is his idea of paradiseÑor maybe the afterworld.”

“Not so,” said Lyanius, his tone strangely morose. “Dwarven artists painted only what they
saw.”

“What do you mean?” asked Neeva, wrinkling her brow at the mural. “Who has ever seen
anything like this? It is even more magnificent than the halfling forest!”

Lyanius looked away. “Come on,” he grunted. “This is not what I brought you to see.”

The dwarf led the way around the corner and down the corridor until they reached a
bronze-gilded door with the bas-relief head of a bearded dwarf. The sculpture's blue eyes,
made of painted glass, followed the movements of Lyanius and his guests as they approached.

Rikus and Neeva glanced at each other, uneasy at the sight of an animate sculpture.

Stopping in front of the door, Lyanius spoke to the head at length, using a strange
language of short, clipped syllables. When he finished, the unblinking eyes studied Rikus
and Neeva for several moments, looking them up and down. Finally the head's metal lips
began to move, and it replied to Lyanius's query in the same staccato tongue. The door
swung open.

As the door moved, Rikus heard the faintest scuffle in the hallway behind them. “Did
anyone else hear that?” he asked.

Lyanius frowned. “I'm certain it was just the echo of the door opening.”

Nevertheless, the old dwarf passed his torch to Rikus. Motioning for the others to stay
behind, Lyanius shuffled down the corridor into the murky blackness, where his dwarven
vision would not be nullified by the light of the torches.

“Shouldn't we go with him?” Rikus asked.

“Not if you value your life,” answered Caelum. “My father is quite touchy about taking
care of himself?”

They waited for what seemed an eternity before Lyanius stepped silently out of the
shadows. “There's nothing there,” he said irritably. “Probably just a wrab.”

“Wrab?” asked Neeva.

“A tiny, flying serpent,” explained Caelum.

“Filthy blood drinkers,” added Lyanius, stepping through the door he had opened earlier.
“Normally, they're as quiet as death, but every now and then they bump into something.”

Frowning, Rikus peered back down the corridor. When he saw nothing to contradict what the
old dwarf had said, he followed the others into a small room. It was lit by a flaxen glow
of ambient light that issued from no apparent source, yet filled the chamber like a haze.
In the center of the room, an open book hovered in midair, as though it were resting on a
table that Rikus could not see.

“I wanted you to know that when you saved Kled, you saved more than a village,” said
Lyanius, motioning at the book proudly.

Its binding was of gold-trimmed leather, and the long columns of angular characters on its
parchment pages glowed with a green light of their own. In the margins, brightly painted
pictures of horned beasts moved before Rikus's eyes, grazing or leaping as though they
still roamed the glens in which the artist had first seen them.

Despite the magical pictures in the book, Rikus was more interested in what he could not
see. Passing his hand first under, then over the tome, he asked, “What holds it up?”

“What holds it up?” snapped Lyanius. “I show you the
Book of the Kemalok Kings,
and you ask about the mechanics of a simple enchantment?”

“I've never had much interest in books. There's little time to learn reading in the slave
pens,” the mul said, self-consciously shifting his attention back to the volume.

“Neither can IÑat least not this book,” answered Lyanius, calming. “It was written in the
language of our ancestors. I have learned to translate only a little of it, enough to know
that this volume tells the history of Kemalok.”

“That'sÑahÑinteresting,” Rikus said, glancing at Neeva to see if she understood why
Lyanius placed so much import on bringing them here.

“I think Rikus will find the Great Hall more to his interest,
Urhnomus,”
Caelum said, noticing Rikus's puzzled expression. “What matters is not that our friends
understand the importance of what they did, but that they kept the
Book of Kings
out of Urikite hands.”

Caelum's words calmed the old dwarf. “You're very wise for someone yet under a hundred,”
he said, nodding proudly.

After they left the little room, the bas-relief head spoke briefly to Lyanius, then the
door closed of its own accord. The old dwarf led his friends farther down the corridor and
turned another corner. This time, they stopped before a pair of massive wooden doors so
infested with dry rot that Rikus was surprised they still hung on their hinges.

Despite the deterioration of the doors, the strange animals carved into each one remained
handsome and distinct. The snarling beasts resembled bears, save that, instead of the
articulated shells armoring the creatures Rikus had fought, these were covered with
nothing more protective than a thick mat of long fur. The mul wondered if the carvings
depicted some gentler breed that the ancient dwarves had kept as pets.

As Lyanius stepped toward the great doors, they swung open, revealing a magnificent
chamber so large that the torches could not light it from one side to the other. Still, as
the four wandered around the perimeter, the mul saw that it had once been a great feast
hall. From the walls hung dozens of steel weapons of all sizes and sorts, interspersed
with huge murals vibrant in color and stroke. These paintings depicted either scenes of
romance between a handsome dwarven noble and his beautiful lady-love, or valiant struggles
in which lone dwarven knights vanquished giants, four-headed serpents, and dozens of
red-eyed man-beasts.

Lyanius led the way to the front of the room, then asked Rikus to stand before the great
banquet table located there. The mul cast a dubious glance in Neeva's direction, but did
as the old dwarf wished. Lyanius handed his torch to his son and disappeared into the
darkness.

For several moments, the aged dwarf rummaged around the perimeter of the room, banging
shields and axes about. Finally he returned to the trio with a black belt slung over his
shoulder and a steel sword in his arms. He laid the belt on the table, then faced Rikus
with the long sword and slapped the mul's left arm with the flat of the blade.

“In the name and presence of the one hundred and fifty kings of the ancient dwarven race,
I acknowledge your bravery and skill in driving the Urikite invaders from the gates of
Kemalok,” Lyanius said, giving Rikus a stern smile and slapping the mul's other arm. “I
name you a Knight of the Dwarven Kings, and present you with this weapon of magic, the
Scourge of Rkard.”

As the old dwarf held the weapon out to him, Rikus's jaw dropped open. “Won't carrying a
weapon in Kemalok anger Rkard?” he gasped. “Especially when it's his?”

“This isn't Rkard's weapon,” Lyanius answered, the corners of his mouth turning down.
“It's the blade that inflicted his last wound, the one that killed him. As for Kemalok's
lawÑguests are forbidden to carry weapons, but you are no longer a guest. You are a knight
of the city.”

As soon as Rikus's hand touched the weapon's hilt, his mind began to whirl in confusion.
Suddenly he could hear his companions' hearts pounding in his ears like the drums of a
Gulgian war party, and their breathing sounded to him like a dust typhoon storming its way
across the Sea of Silt. From behind Rikus came the harsh grate of huge claws scratching
across stone. The mul instinctively leaped to his feet and spun around, only to discover
the sound had been caused by a black beetle scurrying across the floor several yards away.

No sooner had he relaxed from this strange sound than he heard the throb of wrab wings
beating the air outside the great hall. Shoving past Neeva and Caelum, he rushed to the
chamber doors and pushed them shut. The creak of their hinges rang in his ears and ran
down his spine like a lightning bolt. The deafening crack of the clicking latch nearly
knocked him from his feet. An instant later, the wrab alighted on the outside of the door
with a deep rumble. A series of terrific rasps echoed through the wood as it searched for
a crack. Rikus shook his head and stumbled back from the doors, raising the Scourge of
Rkard to defend himself.

As the gleaming blade came into view, the mul's confused mind slowly began to make sense
of the situation. The sword was magic, he realized. With it, he could hear any nearby
sound as though it were made by a giant right next to his ear.

“Rikus, what's wrong?”

Neeva's concerned voice boomed through his head like a thunderclap, scattering the
thoughts he had just managed to collect. The sharp pain that shot through his ear made him
cry out. At last Rikus dropped the sword, then fell to his knees.

“What's the matter with him?” Neeva demanded. Her words still pained the mul's ears,
though they no longer seemed
as loud as they had a moment ago.

“Rikus, pick up the sword again,” ordered Lyanius. “I should have warned you about what to
expect and told you how to control the magic.”

When Rikus did not reach for the sword, the old dwarf shuffled toward him.

“I don't think I want that sword,” Rikus said, glancing fearfully at the blade.

Lyanius stopped next to him. “Pick up the sword,” the dwarf whispered. “Concentrate on one
sound, and the others will fade. You will find that it is a useful thing to have.”

Reluctantly Rikus obeyed, focusing his thoughts on the old dwarf's breathing. To his
surprise, all of the other sounds faded to mere background noise. He remained aware of
them, but they no longer reverberated through his head or hurt his ears. Unfortunately,
the old dwarf's breathing still sounded like the roar of the Dragon to him.

“Now, while concentrating on the sound you picked, speak in a normal tone of voice,”
Lyanius said.

Keeping his attention fixed on the old dwarf's breathing, Rikus answered, “Fine. What now?”

The rush of air into and out of the old dwarf's lungs faded to the volume of his own
voice, and Rikus found he could think again.

“Now come with me,” Lyanius said.

Rikus stood and followed the dwarf back to the banquet table. “Does the sword do anything
else?”

“I don't know,” Lyanius answered. “I've seen it mentioned in the
Book of Kings,
but I can't read enough of the entry to know all the weapon's possible powers.”

As Lyanius spoke, Rikus adjusted his magically augmented hearing by concentrating on the
dwarf's words. “Thank you for the blade. This is a great honor.”

“We're not done yet,” said the old dwarf, taking the black belt off the table.

Lyanius held the belt out to Rikus, its stiff leather crackling like pebbles falling on
cobblestones. The thing was so wide it was almost a girdle. The buckle was hidden by a
field of red flames, with the skull of a fierce half-man in the center.

“This is the Belt of Rank,” Lyanius said, strapping the belt around the mul's waist.

Rikus stepped away, asking, “What does it do?”

His question brought a chuckle to the old dwarf's lips. “There is no need to worry,”
Lyanius said. “Its magic is not as intrusive as that of the Scourge of Rkard. For three
thousand years, this belt was passed from one dwarven general to the next, a symbol of
authority over all the armies of the dwarves.”