Gathering of the Titans: The Tol Chronicles Book 2 (14 page)

Aspet was taken aback. “I... thank you for the well-wishes underlying that prognostication; many things must fall into place for it to be rendered accurate, I’m afraid.”

“Nonetheless, the prediction stands.”

in which Tol rescues a slave beneath Hellehoell

Tol stepped off the carriage in Fenurian to quite a different picture than the previous time. Instead of tents and generators, there was a real live station house. It wasn’t quite finished, but it was open for business and in comparison with the tents, quite elegant. On the ride to Hellehoell he saw other significant reconstruction efforts, including some needed infrastructure improvements to highways and public utilities. It was a far cry from the quake-ravaged landscape of three months earlier, and it cheered him considerably.

His purpose was to visit with the titan leadership and evaluate for the King how diplomatic ties were progressing. In order to encourage the titans and subject them to as little kingdom bureaucracy as necessary, Aspet had declared the occupied portions of Hellehoell an autonomous region, only nominally subject to the laws and oversight of the Tragacanth government. It was the first step toward granting them full city-state status, which was Aspet’s eventual intent if they so desired it. It was a sincere offer, with no strings attached, and Tol was proud of his brother for extending it. So far CoME had offered no objections.

He drove a rented pram to the entrance to Hellehoell, now patrolled by teams consisting of both Ferroc Norda and titan guards. Tol was met by Tartag, who had been appointed Ambassador to Tragacanth by the first interim Hellehoell Council of Elders. The titan seemed quite excited over the prospect of showing off more of his beloved city to Tol. As they descended from the newly-widened entrance, the considerable progress of the titan restoration crews was quite evident. Gone were the dusty, dull stones and partially filled-in carvings. In their place were brilliantly gleaming facades of granite and marble with cunningly wrought silver inlays. The air, once musty and unpleasant, was now swept clean and cool, brought up from some deep reservoir. The streets were lit by a seemingly infinite number of gas lamps that cast a warm, yellow, inviting glow.

There was light everywhere; former murk and shadow now replaced by golden radiance. The very stone seemed alive and vibrant. As they moved even deeper the layout of the municipal complex, obscured by debris and dust during their first descent, was now revealed. A wide avenue paved with shimmering marble rolled past tall, beautiful town homes and shops to the central Plaza of the Wheel, where connecting broadstreets of quartz cobblestone took travelers to the eight outer cities, five of which were already mostly ready for occupancy as a result of the titans’ hard work. Few creatures could work so diligently as titans, especially ones as strongly motivated as were these, reclaiming their magnificent birthright after millennia of dispersion.

Each of the perimeter cities, which Tartag referred to as ‘Scintillas,’ boasted its own unique fundamental architecture. One was based on blue bricks made from Tudmash Marsh mud; another on ironstone from the southern Masron and northern Espwe Mountains. A third boasted massive greenish blood timbers brought around in coastwise steamers from southern Galanga. Others were based on bleached sea-coral and shimmering starrock. Taken as a whole, Hellehoell represented every facet of titan society and knowledge, every social and cultural stratum—the full spectrum of what it meant to share the titan heritage.

As he toured the restorations, Tol was struck by the apparent incongruity of the huge, brutal titans of legend and these sensitive, industrious souls with the patience to carve intricate zoomorphics into ironstone columns and cornerstones. Perhaps titans who lived in the wild were somehow different, but Tol’s instinct—the one that had saved his life innumerable times on the street—told him that this wasn’t the case: titans had been saddled with their ferocious reputations merely because they
looked
capable of a great deal of mayhem. Of course Tol harbored no delusions that they could not tear up the landscape quite effectively given sufficient motivation, but overall they seemed peaceable creatures with little natural propensity for violence.

At the very deepest portion of the reconstruction, which now consisted of excavation of an area buried under an ancient collapse and rockslide, Tol and Tartag paused so that the titan could expound on what was known of this, the very oldest chamber, the first expansion of what up until then had merely been a wide shaft. It had been abandoned, the records said, after a sudden collapse of the roof and walls killed a number of workers. The cause of the collapse had never been officially determined, but to this day there persists in titan genetic memory the account of a creature or force awakened in the tunnels and the sacrifice of nine elite titan commandos who died holding it off while the explosives were planted to collapse the tunnel forever…or so they thought.

Tartag was rounding the corner, heading for home with his exposition, when suddenly his rumbling voice was interrupted by a shrill banshee wail and the sound of feet flying across stone. After a few seconds a large group of titans came barreling out of the newly-opened area. Tartag called to one in Titanic and seemed taken aback by the reply.

“It seems,” he said in response to Tol’s unspoken inquiry, “That they’ve inadvertently disturbed a nest of deepdrakes.”

“What the smek is a ‘deepdrake?” Tol asked.

A voice from Tol’s pocket suddenly cut in. “Deepdrakes were thought, at least up until now, to be mythical inhabitants of very far underground locations that serve as the transition zones between normal rock and magma chambers. They are reptiloid, ten to fourteen meters long, and associate in groups of up to twenty-five individuals.”

“Thanks, Petey. Tartag, about how far beneath the surface are we right now?”

The titan did a little figuring in his head, putting his lengthy digits to good use in the process. “I’d say about a kilometer, give or take a few tens of meters.”

Great. Petey, can you corroborate that?”

“It’s a little difficult to be sure of calibration down here, but backtracking along my known good sensor readings and extrapolating where necessary, I would say approximately 1,037 meters.”

“Well done, Tartag. At this point we only have two options, presuming all of the titans are out of there: we can push ahead and investigate these creatures in the name of science, or just re-seal the tunnel here and now and be done with it. If anyone wants my opinion, I’d say we go with the latter.”

Before Tartag could answer, a small square module on his belt began to vibrate and flash red. The titan ripped it off and read the message on the small screen. He turned ashen as he sounded out the peculiar glyphs of the titan language. Finally he dropped his arm weakly, narrowly avoiding dropping the module. “There is a titan trapped in the deepdrake chamber. His emergency telemetry signal has been activated, which means he’s been seriously injured.”

“Decision made for us, then.” Tol walked over to a row of packs with tools in them. “Would it be all right to borrow some of this stuff?”

“I can authorize that. Why do you need it?”

Tol looked surprised. “I don’t think I’ll be much good in there with only my bare hands.”

“In there?” Tartag repeated, as though he couldn’t quite make sense of the words.

“Yes, in there. Where the trapped titan is. Where did you think I was talking about?”

“But…trained extrication teams and a Special Forces unit from the Civil Guard will be here soon. We can’t just go in there without knowing what we’re up against.”

“A titan’s life is at stake. I’m sworn to protect the people of Tragacanth, and until His Majesty signs that final Writ of Territorial Transfer, Hellehoell is still nominally Tragacanth. I will do my best to rescue him or die in the attempt.”

“I’m afraid I can’t authorize such an expedition.”

Tol whipped out his KotC and Special Investigator credentials.

“You don’t need to. I am already authorized by Royal Writ to carry out operations anywhere in Tragacanth or its possessions. That, as I’ve already pointed out, includes here. Anyone coming with me?”

It took Tartag a few seconds of mental anguish comparing rules and regulations before he agreed, albeit somewhat reluctantly, to accompany Tol. Two other titans from the crew that recently fled, Apoj and Eltiar, agreed to join the party and act as guides.

Tol picked the smallest pack of the lot, which still nearly dragged the floor when resting on his comparatively diminutive shoulders, and filled it with whatever tools looked as though they might come in handy during the mission: a pickaxe, hand axe, auger, shovel, spade, pry bar, and a couple of less readily identifiable but still strangely useful-appearing implements of high-carbon steel with sturdy nut tree wood hafts. These were all scaled for titan use, of course, so Tol felt a little like a child wielding adult tools, but he persevered. A citizen’s life was at stake here.

So it was that a heroic group of three titans led by a goblin cracked and pounded and atomized their way through a dense wall of stones, boulders, and gravel on a desperate rescue mission. At length they broke through to a smallish antechamber and stopped to catch their breath and take their bearings. Tol walked the perimeter, searching for the route forward. He dropped a thin stream of dust in front of a small hole and was gratified to observe it first be drawn into the hole and then repulsed. He wedged a pry bar into the opening and started working on enlarging it.

At length he returned to the rescue party. “I think I got us a way forward worked out.”

“Excellent,” replied Tartag, “Did you find another tunnel?”

“Well, yes, except that I sort of had to make it myself, or at least part of it.”

“You dug a
tunnel
while you were gone? One that
titans
could fit through?” Apoj seemed skeptical. “You don’t look strong enough for that.” It wasn’t an insult; just an observation of what seemed the obvious.

“I’m not as strong as you guys, sure, but I have a tendency not to let go of an objective until it is accomplished.”

In truth, while titans have at least three times the brute strength of goblins as a species, goblin tenacity is legendary. A goblin once fixated on a goal was more difficult to dislodge from it than tearing a razor-toothed swamp floater away from the carcass of a tidewater grazer calf.

The titans were impressed with the entryway the little goblin had managed to create. It was broad enough for a titan with pack to crawl through, which meant ‘wide enough for a small dray to negotiate.’ They lost no time scrambling through, to find themselves in a shallow, flat room of sufficient height for the titans to stand. There was a hole in the floor, through which they could hear and smell flowing water. There seemed to be a little steam curling up from time to time, as well, which suggested that the water was geothermal in origin. Best not to leap in until they could check the temperature. Tol didn’t know what boiled titan smelled like, but he’d experienced poached goblin and it wasn’t pleasant.

Using some rope from his pack and a rock to take soundings, Tol concluded that the water’s surface lay about five meters below the opening and was three or four meters in depth. The rock came back warm, but not too hot to touch. The water was probably not only easily survivable, but in fact quite pleasant.

“Can titans swim?” he asked.

“Yes. Not quickly, but for long distances,” replied Tartag.

“Perfect. We don’t need speed for this, but we don’t know how long we’ll have to swim. I’ll go first.” He crawled to the edge of the opening and tied one end of a long rope around his shoulders in a loose harness. “Lower me down. Once I’ve determined the water is habitable, I’ll slip out and you can jump in after me.” The titans nodded. Tol went over the edge and they paid out the line slowly until they heard a splash followed by Tol’s voice. “This is smekkin’great!” he called up to them, “Like being in a spa or something. I’m slipping out of the rope now.” The line went slack and they retrieved it.

One by one the titans followed Tol into the warm, mineral- laden water. There wasn’t a lot of light, but they could still see where they were going to a certain extent. They swam with the steadily- increasing current for a while before Eltiar’s voice suddenly broke the silence. “Anyone else hear that noise? Sounds like a roaring or rumbling.”

“I hear it, too,” replied Tol, who was still ahead of the pack,“And I think I know what it is. Anybody see a shelf or ledge or anything else we can grab onto?”

They all looked around at the smooth stone walls.“No, not really.”

“Then you better take a deep brea…”

The titans were surprised when Tol suddenly disappeared and even more surprised when they followed him…over the edge of a vertical falls down into total darkness.

The little party plummeted wetly for a quite a long time, it seemed to them. At last Tol touched bottom and pushed himself upwards as powerfully as possible—he had no idea how deep the channel was here. He popped up on the surface, gasping for air, and discovered after a few disorienting moments that he was holding onto a thin shelf, evidently
behind
the waterfall. He clambered up onto it and called to the others.

“Hey, guys. Over here!”

First Tartag, followed by Eltiar and Apoj, hoisted their waterlogged forms up onto the shelf with Tol. He produced a small electric torch and waved it around trying to build up some comprehensible picture of their surroundings. They appeared to be in a small shelter or anteroom hidden behind the pitch-black waterfall. Shining the torch at the far end of the space proved unhelpful, so Tol struggled to his feet and shuffled cautiously in that direction. Tartag followed closely behind.

“The tracking signal is finally getting stronger. I think we’re heading in the right direction now,” Tartag called after Tol.

“Can you tell how far we need to go?”

“It isn’t that granular a device. It only tells direction and relative signal strength.”