Promise of Wrath (The Hellequin Chronicles Book 6) (12 page)

I landed just beyond Remy, Morgan, and Mordred, scuffing my knees, elbows, and palms, but alive. And soon after the four of us were sprinting off toward the center of the city, hoping the spiders were done for the night.

We continued on in silence, until we reached the center of the city, a ring of buildings all looking in on a large, ornate fountain in the shape of an anvil. Water glistened in the fountain. Like Mordred had said, at some point there had been a golden statue atop it, although it now lay on the ground as if cast aside; time or vandalism hadn’t been kind to it. A large part of the statue’s limbs had been destroyed, and the king’s head was missing entirely.

“Someone didn’t like their monarch,” Morgan said.

“His son was king when I was here,” Mordred said.

“Do you think those blood elves destroyed it?” I asked.

“I have no idea. A lot has changed since my last visit.”

“So, where to now?” Remy asked.

“We need to get into the mountain, into the dwarven city. It’s the only way we’ll be able to figure out how to get home. There should be a realm gate, and if there isn’t, the library will hopefully give us clues. So long as it wasn’t destroyed.”

“The blood elves?” Morgan asked.

Mordred nodded. “They hated the dwarves and anything associated with them, but I can’t imagine the dwarves would have let the library fall into elven hands without a considerable fight. Hopefully some of it will remain.”

“Heard some commotion,” Diane said as she, along with Kasey and Chloe, joined us. She turned to me. “I assume that was your doing?”

“Big spiders,” I said as nonchalantly as possible.

“This place is beginning to turn into the worst tourist destination ever,” Chloe said.

“How do we get into the mountain?” I asked, wanting to get the conversation back on track.

“Two ways,” Mordred said, picking up a stick from the ground and using it to draw a circle in the layer of dirt beneath our feet. “The first is we leave the city, which is this circle, and walk around to the right. There’s a bridge there; we cross it to the entrance to the city of Thorem. The big problem there is how exposed we will be. The bridge is over a gorge that is probably a few hundred feet in height, and the bridge itself stretches for the better part of a quarter of a mile. If there’re any problems once we’re there, we’re stuck. There’s nowhere to go.”

“Second option, please,” Remy said.

“There’s an entrance in the mountains just up ahead.” Mordred drew a second, smaller circle just above the first. “It means descending into the gorge much further along the trail where it’s shallower. It’ll be several miles of trekking through woods with who-knows-what inside, before we reach a part of the gorge that’s only about a dozen feet deep. Unfortunately, it then means a climb up the mountain. There used to be a pathway there, but considering what’s now inhabiting this city, it might not be the empty path it used to be.”

“So both of our options suck,” Kasey summarized. “Excellent.”

“There is a third option,” a voice said from the shadows.

Morgan drew her twin blades, while I noticed Kasey’s fingernails grow longer, the hair on the back of her hands beginning to sprout.

“I’m not a threat,” the voice said. A man stepped out of the shadows of one of the buildings. His skeletal appearance made it difficult to age him, especially with a bald head and leather armor that looked to be slightly too large for his frame. “I can take you into the mountain.”

“Who are you?” Diane asked.

“My name is William,” he told us. “I live under the mountain, close to what remains of the dwarven city.”

“You’re human,” Remy stated. “What happened to the people in this city?”

“Wiped out, or taken as slaves,” William said, taking another step toward us. “Fourteen-hundred years of slavery and death. There’s a small resistance movement, but we’re not powerful enough to overthrow the blood elves.”

Mordred looked like he’d been hit when the word
slave
was used. I almost asked him if he was okay, but managed to stop myself. I didn’t want to give a crap about what he felt, but it’s hard to maintain hatred when you need one another to survive.

“Is there a realm gate in Thorem?” I asked, no less thrilled to hear that the blood elves had taken slaves. To discover that there were untold numbers of humans in servitude to monsters who terrified even Mordred sent a shiver up my spine.

“At least two that I know of,” William confirmed. “I haven’t been close enough to either to say whether they work or not.”

“Any dwarves still remain the city?” I continued, trying to ascertain whether our newcomer was on our side or whether he had ulterior motives.

“A few hundred last I heard; we have little communication with them. They spend most of their time running and hiding from the elves.”

“How do you get us into Thorem?” Kasey asked.

“There’s a set of passageways under here. It goes into the lowest parts of Thorem, away from the blood elves, who don’t like to go down that far. They tend to occupy the furthest left side of the mountain, where the crystals and richer parts of the city used to be. It’s safe, I promise.”

“We don’t have a lot of choices here,” Diane whispered. “I don’t trust him, though.”

“Me neither,” I agreed.

“Take us into the city,” Mordred said, surprising me with how quickly he’d agreed to go back into a place he’d been professing to hate since we’d arrived in the realm. “The sooner we’re there, the sooner we can figure out a way to leave.”

Well, at least that explained why he was suddenly so keen to get into Thorem.

“We should leave quickly,” William said, and turned to go.

“What do you get out of it?” I asked.

William didn’t turn back to the group. “I’m hoping you’ll help me. The blood elves have my father. I can’t find him alone.”

“We’ll help,” Mordred told William, surprising me even more. “Lead the way.”

William led us all into a large building on the opposite side of the city center, which, from the size and number of benches inside, had probably been some sort of political building or a town hall. He stopped at the rear of the large room and knelt, moving a rug from the floor and exposing several dwarven runes.

“What do they say?” I asked.

“
Hidden
,” he told me, placing his hand on one, which lit up bright blue, the others around it doing the same as a huge groan escaped the wooden floor beneath my feet. I stepped back slightly when the floor began to lift and move, exposing a set of stairs beneath it that led down beneath the city.

“It’s okay; it’s torch-lit,” William promised. “It’s a giant cavern, but it’s safe. I already checked it on the way to meet you. I need to go last to ensure it’s closed. Sometimes the predators in town like to come in here after they smell us.”

I looked down at the flickering light several dozen feet beneath us. “If there’s something I don’t like down here, if this is some elaborate trap, I’m going to kill you, William.”

“I promise it’s safe.”

“We’ll see.” And I descended the stairs into the unknown beneath me.

CHAPTER
13

T
he cave system under the city was expansive, and more than once there were crossroads and closed doors of silver and gold that could have led to a whole separate system for all I knew.

“How do you know where to go?” Chloe asked after half an hour of walking along an identical path, with barely indistinguishable walls and ceilings. Her voice echoed around the massive area.

“Small marks on the walls,” William told us. He walked over to one and showed a small green rune next to a white crystal that emitted enough light to see all around us. “Each rune goes to a different part of the system. This whole place was designed by the dwarves to get in and out of the city with minimal problems.”

“It’s stood the test of time,” I said, feeling somewhat in awe of the huge amount of work that must have gone into creating something as impressive as this.

“The dwarves knew how to build things,” William said. “But most of this was done after the blood elves came. It was done in haste, so there’s none of the impressive finery that was in other parts of the city.”

“The blood elves were responsible for the dwarves vanishing?” Diane asked.

I wasn’t sure in the light, but it looked like William shrugged.

“That’s what the blood elves say: that they came and the dwarves fled.”

“That doesn’t sound like any dwarves I’ve ever met,” Diane said. “Most of them liked to fight, liked to test their abilities in battle. They were artisans, craftsmen and -women with no peer, but they were warriors, too. Good ones. They wouldn’t have left here without a fight.”

“That’s only what we get told. The blood elves like to limit human reading and we’re not allowed to discuss the dwarves in their company. The great library is off limits to all slaves—even those of us who secretly resist them won’t go there.”

Mordred’s eyes appeared to light up. “The library is still intact?”

William looked back, and I could see the uncertainty in his eyes. Had he said too much? Had he revealed something he shouldn’t have? He nodded slowly. “Last I heard, yes. Some of the blood elves like to read; there’s a lot of knowledge there. They get angry that they can’t recreate the dwarves’ abilities with alchemy. That and they can’t read the runes—not properly. There’s a machine that’s meant to teach people how to read dwarvish, but it’s guarded by the dwarves. The blood elves have lost many trying to get to it, and now they don’t bother.”

“That machine might help us recreate one of those tablets,” Morgan whispered to Mordred.

I wanted to tell her to watch what she said, but it appeared that William hadn’t heard. “More importantly, are any dwarves still here?” I asked.

William looked uncertain, but nodded. “Mostly in a city they call Sanctuary.”

“How many?”

“Several hundred, maybe more. Neither the elves nor the resistance know for sure.”

“So could the dwarves help us? Or at least help lead us to someone who can?” Remy continued. “Someone outside of this realm knows how to make those tablets, which means they must have come here to do so. Or they’re a dwarf, and have stayed hidden for centuries, if not longer.”

William didn’t engage in any more conversation with anyone in the group, although what the tablets were, who created them, and how was all anyone wanted to discuss.

The dividing line between the caves made with haste and those done with love and care was quite literally one stride wide. One second we were walking through an exit from one cave system, and the next we were in a whole new world. Columns of the finest stone stood all along both sides of the huge room. The rock walls had been carved into ornate patterns, the colors of red, gold, and silver shining through. There were members of royalty in the human world who had castles and great halls, but none of them could have held a candle to this. The ceiling was decorated with jewels, showing a huge mural of a battle. Part of it cascaded down onto the walls, as if the dwarves had simply run out of room but were determined to finish anyway.

“What is that depicting?” I stared at one part where two groups of dwarves were fighting what looked like a huge dragon.

“I don’t know,” William said without looking up. To be fair, he’d probably seen it hundreds of times, and had it committed to memory. “The dwarves had a lot of myths and stories, each one more exaggerated than the last.”

“I’ve been wondering something,” Diane said. “How is it you speak English so well?”

“My father taught me English as a child,” he said quickly. “The blood elves force us to talk in their language, though, so we keep any human languages secret. Unfortunately, my parents didn’t escape with me to the resistance. It’s why I need your help.”

“To find your dad?” I asked. “What about your mum?”

“She died just after I left.”

“I’m sorry for your loss.”

“It was long ago. Death is a normal thing here: an expected thing. There’s no such thing as living in the city of Thorem. There’s only surviving or death.”

“Sounds depressing,” Kasey said.

“It’s all I know,” William assured her. “We don’t have far to go.”

We followed him for a few more minutes until we reached a set of silver double doors. A huge carving of a stag sat on one door, and what I assumed was a panther on the other; in the center, crossing between the two doors, was a tree. It was a stunning piece of work for something as simple as a door.

“Once this door is open, you’ll need to follow me exactly. No talking, just in case there are blood elves around. We don’t want a fight.”

He pushed the doors open and crept inside. We followed until we reached the bright open hallway beyond, then down and around a corner, where the hallway opened out into an expansive cavern. More columns littered the side and there were several doors against one wall. Like other parts of the mountain we’d walked past, crystals were embedded in the walls and ceiling, giving off enough light to see by. The ceiling was at least seventy feet above our heads, leaving a gap of darkness between the light on the wall and ceiling. At one point it had probably been a place of beauty, but over time it had just grown ominous, like much of the blood-elf-controlled mountain.

The wall opposite the one with the crystals had breaks in it that allowed you to look out into the dark chasm just beyond. If I stared for just a few seconds, I was certain I could make out the faint glow of something purple in the distance.

We were on a dwarven street, several miles beneath the top of the mountain. I hadn’t been back to the city since I was much younger. It was a strange sensation. I looked up at where the sky should be, and saw nothing but twinkling lights in the rock high above my head.

“We need to keep moving,” William whispered to me, suddenly nervous and concerned about everything around us.

We continued on through the city, until we came to a ramp leading down to several buildings.

“This is it: this is the entrance to the resistance,” William told us. “Here you’ll find help. You’ll find what you’re looking for—I hope, anyway. I’ll go in first, tell them you’re here, then I’ll have you enter. We’ll go in a few at a time. Maybe one group of four and another of three. These people are skittish. They’re not used to trusting anyone. I don’t want them to not trust you. Is this okay?”

No one had any problems they voiced, although I certainly wasn’t okay about splitting up the group again—not here. Even so, I followed William down the ramp and the whole group stayed in the small space between two buildings, the darkness keeping us completely hidden from the street and anyone who happened to come by. Thankfully, and despite the fact that every noise I heard made me wonder what was out there in the city, the darkness wasn’t needed and we were left alone from prying eyes for the duration of William’s meeting inside the building.

William soon reappeared, standing in the mouth of the alley. “Four of you come with me, I’ll be back for the others in a few minutes.”

“You know this could be a trap, yes?” Diane whispered in my ear.

I nodded. “Give it sixty seconds. If you don’t hear anything, break the door down. Remy, Kasey, Mordred, with me.”

“No chance,” Morgan said. “He’s not going with you.”

“Look, I’m not thrilled about it,” I whispered, “but if that’s a trap—and I’d like to explain how much this pains me to say it—Mordred’s ruthless streak will come in handy. And frankly, I don’t trust you two together with my friends. I do trust that if you try to hurt anyone that Diane will tear your head off. Also, Chloe is hurt, and I’d rather she stayed out of harm’s way.”

“If Mordred gets hurt—” Morgan threatened, seemingly ignoring my own threat.

“I’ll be fine,” Mordred assured her. “Nathan might hate me, but we need one another. And he’s right: we’re the less threatening of the seven of us. And the poison in Chloe’s body makes her weaker than the others. She needs protecting. Diane is much more capable of doing that. And if anything does go wrong, I know you’ll tear this place apart to search for me.”

“Would you two like to hug it out?” Remy asked. “Because I’d really like to get on with it now.”

Without another word, Mordred left the alley, with Kasey and Remy following close behind and me bringing up the rear. William took us to the building’s door and paused. “Don’t make any sudden movements in there; the people are nervous enough as it is. We get a lot of slaves trying to infiltrate us to feed information back to the blood elves.”

He pushed open the door and we all walked inside, while my hand itched for a weapon to hold. The interior of the building was sparse, with nothing on the floor, not even a rug. Only torches hung on the walls, their flame the only thing lighting the dingy room. Someone stood in the corner, wrapped in dark cloth. I couldn’t tell what species it was, let alone their age or sex.

“You come to the resistance.” The voice was muffled by the cloth over the figure’s face.

“Apparently,” Remy said, a slight edge to the word.

“How do we know you’re not a spy?” the muffled voice continued.

“You don’t,” Mordred snapped. “We need to get out of this realm. We were told you could help.”

“Maybe,” the voice said, with a slight chuckle. “Maybe not.”

“I have no time for games,” Mordred said. Then he turned toward the door, only to pause.

I looked back and saw William, a broadsword in his hand pointed toward Mordred.

“A silver sword?” I said. “Isn’t that a bit much? I thought you were the resistance.”

“In the center of the room,” William commanded.

“They’re not with the resistance,” Remy said.

“Yeah, I got that,” I conceded. “Kasey, calm, please.”

Her soft growls ceased and she nodded once, but her eyes never left the sword. Silver could kill any of us in that room, but if Kasey got stabbed there was a lot more chance of it than the rest of us. Even a small cut from a silver blade could be deadly to a werewolf.

“So what happens now?” I asked. “Because you really should have thought this through.”

William moved around to stand beside the cloth-wrapped person, who began to laugh. “Nonhuman filth,” the figure said. “It’s been a while since your kind was here.” William placed his hand on the wall beside him and runes lit up all across the floor, which began to move.

“You’ll make great fun for us. It’s rare we have something more interesting than dwarf or human to keep us occupied. You weren’t meant to arrive so far out of town; apparently the tablets weren’t specific enough. You will come with us, or die.”

“Blood elf,” Mordred said, his words filled with enough venom to kill a herd of elephants.

The figure began to methodically unwrap the cloth from around his face, revealing a gray skin stretched tight against pronounced facial bones. Several scars, some old and some new, crisscrossed his face. At some point his nose had been badly broken and never properly re-set.

The floor started sliding under the far wall, jerking suddenly and throwing us all to the ground. Mordred was on his feet in a heartbeat, sprinting toward the blood elf with murderous fury. William tried to step between them, but a blast of air from my hand threw him aside, into the far wall with a clout. The silver sword dropped from his hands and tumbled down into the darkness that filled the space where the floor used to be.

“Oh, shit,” Kasey said. “We probably don’t want to go down there.”

Mordred and the blood elf were engaged in combat in the corner, with Mordred forgoing all sense of fighting intelligently, and just raining down blows on the elf, who avoided or blocked most of them, all the while continuing to laugh. He struck Mordred once in the chest and sent him to his knees, tearing off the remains of his wrapping to reveal runes tattooed on his bare chest. “You’ll have to do better than that, little man.”

The floor continued to move, exposing more and more of whatever was beneath us. I created a lightning bolt in my hand and threw it at the building’s door, which exploded from the impact. Hopefully that would be enough noise to get Diane and the others to come running.

“We need to get out of here!” I shouted as William jumped back onto the floor, another sword in hand. I avoided him, using my air magic to keep him off-balance, while Mordred continued to fight the blood elf, and Remy leapt across to the doorway.

“Let’s go!” Remy shouted.

Kasey followed suit and jumped, but after knocking Mordred aside once more, the blood elf used a whip to catch hold of Kasey’s foot, dragging her away from the safety of the doorway and into the darkness beneath us.

“Mordred, let’s go!” I shouted, and grabbed hold of William, taking him with me as I launched myself into the unknown.