The Dark Warden (Book 6) (17 page)

“I…don’t think so,” said Calliande. “It’s more like a…a channel, I think.”

“A pipe would be more accurate,” said Morigna.

“A valve,” said Mara, the blue fire reflecting in her green eyes.

Calliande and Morigna both looked at her. Mara was probably the only person who could make Calliande and Morigna stop arguing long enough to listen.

“It looks like a valve,” said Mara. “I see the spells in the stones, and it looks like they were made to…channel and focus power.” She hesitated. “A lot of power.” 

“Are we in any danger from them?” said Ridmark.

“So long as you don’t enter the circles,” said Mara. “Then I think you would be…um, melted. Maybe. Whatever happens wouldn’t be pleasant.” 

“Then by all means,” said Jager, “let us leave the Warden’s little light show undisturbed.” 

Ridmark led the others across the hall, making sure to stay well away from the stone circles. Why had the Warden built the things? Some magical spell? Some research he pursued? The Warden had been trapped with Urd Morlemoch for millennia, and no doubt had turned to all sorts of diversions to keep his mind occupied. 

Another archway opened in the far wall, opening into a second hall, larger than the first. The central quarter or so of the floor was taken up by a still, square pool, clumps of red-glowing ghost mushrooms growing at its edges. The ceiling rose high overhead, so high that Ridmark could barely see it in the gloom. Hundreds of plinths of white stone stood in neat rows across the floor, each one supporting a statue of a dark elven warrior carved from white stone. The warriors wore carved armor, swords thrust towards the ceiling. 

“Ridmark,” said Mara. “There are spells on each of the statues. I can’t tell what kind.”

“Calliande?” said Ridmark. 

She gave a sharp shake of her head. “I cannot discern their nature. They’re not wards, though. Something else.” 

“I suppose if we walk into the hall,” said Gavin, “the statues will come to life and attack us? It sounds implausible, but we have seen stranger things in the dark elven ruins.” 

“I think this used to be one of the natural caverns,” said Ridmark. “The Warden must have rebuilt it. There were urvaalgs here. Morigna.”

She closed her eyes and gestured, casting the spell that allowed her to sense the presence of anyone standing upon the ground.

“Nothing,” she said, opening her eyes. “No urvaalgs. But…there are blank spots upon the plinths.”

“Blank spots?” said Ridmark.

Morigna grimaced. “It is hard to explain. It feels like there should be something standing there. Yet I can sense nothing.”

“The statues, perhaps?” said Calliande. 

For once Morigna did not have a biting rejoinder. “I do not think so. The spell would detect the statues as part of the ground.”

“There is another arch on the far end of the hall,” said Ridmark. “Keep your eyes open and your weapons ready. If this is a trap or a guardian of some kind, we will have to fight our way free.”

He started forward, making his way between the rows of silent statues. The plinths came to his waist, and the statues seemed to look down upon him. He glanced up, wondering if the statues were actually looking at him, but they remained motionless. Soon they reached the pool at the center of the chamber. Halfway across, and nothing had happened.

A bolt of pain went through Ridmark’s head. He turned and saw Heartwarden blazing in Arandar’s fist. The sword was reacting to a sudden surge of dark magic around them.

“I don’t see anything,” said Arandar. “There’s not…”

“Ridmark!” said Mara. “The statues! They’re not really statues. They…”

Every single statue in the hall rippled and vanished.

In their place stood undead Devout orcs. Most still had their flesh, while some had decayed to skeletons. Yet all had the blue fire pulsing in their dead veins and dancing in their empty eye sockets. 

“Illusions,” finished Mara, her voice a croak.

“Defend yourselves!” said Ridmark, raising his staff.

In identical motions the undead jumped, raising swords of dark elven steel in their hands. One of the undead flung itself at Ridmark, and he swung his staff with both hands, catching the creature in its chest and throwing it to the smooth stone floor. The creature surged back to its feet, raising its sword, and Ridmark cast aside his staff and seized the axe from his belt, dodging the corpse’s blow. He whipped the axe around, driving the heavy blade through the withered thing’s neck. Dust flew and bone shattered, and the corpse collapsed motionless to the white floor. 

Dozens more rushed to take its place. 

Ridmark saw Calliande fall beneath the weight of two skeletal corpses and ran to aid her. A blast of white flame erupted from Calliande, throwing the undead from her and spreading in a ring through the nearby plinths. A dozen undead fell, the dark magic upon them ripped apart by the force of Calliande’s magic. Mara helped Calliande to her feet, and the Magistria cast another spell. A second wave of white fire rolled out from her, and this time the fire wrapped around their weapons, the axe’s haft trembling in Ridmark’s grasp. 

“The aisles!” shouted Ridmark as he split the skull of another undead. “Defend the aisles between the plinths. Calliande and Morigna, get in the center. Go!” 

The others cut their way free and moved into position. Ridmark, Caius, Kharlacht, Gavin, Arandar, and Mara and Jager together could each block one of the aisles. Calliande and Morigna stood in the center, Calliande’s face tight with concentration as she maintained the spell upon the weapons and flung the occasional blast of white flame. Morigna worked a spell of her own, and Ridmark expected the ground to ripple and fold, flinging the undead from their feet. Instead the stone became spongy and soft, and the undead started to sink into it. The altered stone slowed their advance, and Ridmark found it easy to strike down one, two, three of the creatures at once.

Yet more took their place. 

Arandar cut through the undead like a storm, Heartwarden a torch of white flame in his fist. Whenever the sword cut through one of the creatures, the undead simply fell apart. Arandar shouted a battle cry and began to push forward, his battered shield leading.

“Hold!” shouted Ridmark, ducking under the swing of a sword and striking with his axe. “Hold! Wait for the undead come to you! Don’t let them surround you.” Even a Swordbearer would fall if the undead surrounded him. 

Arandar nodded and fell back a few paces. Again Morigna cast her spell, and the stone tiles beneath the undead became spongy. Ridmark hacked and slashed with his axe, the dwarven blade hammering through undead flesh and bone. It reminded him absurdly of chopping wood. Again and again he swung, and soon a ring of corpses surrounded Calliande and Morigna, held back by spell-enhanced steel.

And still the undead came. Ridmark hacked and swung and dodged, sweat dripping down his face, his arms aching with the effort. The Warden likely had an unlimited supply of the undead corpses. Perhaps he would not even notice the new corpses in his collection until he happened to come down here and find the bodies.

Ridmark took the head from another undead, raised his axe, and looked for another foe. 

But there were none left.

Surprised, he blinked. A ring of orcish corpses encircled them, the blue fire gone from their veins and eyes. Nothing else moved in the vast hall, and all the plinths were empty.

“We…we destroyed them all?” said Gavin, astonished. He had taken a cut on his jaw and another on his sword arm, but was otherwise unhurt.

“It would appear so,” said Kharlacht, lowering his sword. 

Arandar snorted as Heartwarden’s fire dimmed, easing Ridmark’s incessant headache. “Perhaps the Warden is not as formidable as he seems. Maybe there are no more undead to throw at us.”

“No,” said Ridmark. “The Devout have buried their dead here for thousands of years. This is just the beginning.” He shook his head. “We shall face worse things yet.”

Calliande and Arandar healed their wounds, and they pressed deeper into the catacombs of Urd Morlemoch.

Chapter 11 - Mechanisms

Utter silence reigned in Urd Morlemoch’s vaults. 

Ridmark led the way through the corridor, his staff and his axe in hand. Kharlacht trailed on his left and Caius on his right. Arandar and Gavin brought up the back, shielding Calliande and Morigna. Arandar had wished to walk in front, ready to bring Heartwarden to bear against any foes, but Ridmark wanted him in place to guard the women. Heartwarden was a powerful weapon, but so were Calliande’s magic and Morigna’s spells. The cleverer creatures of the dark elves, the urshanes and the urhaalgars and the urdhracosi, would know enough to attack Calliande and Morigna first. 

Without their magic, the battle against the undead would have gone very differently. 

Mara and Jager flanked Calliande and Morigna, blades in hand. The two of them moved with a silence that was almost uncanny. Even an urhaalgar would have been hard-pressed to move with equal quiet. 

Their quiet was matched only by the funereal silence of Urd Morlemoch itself. They moved through high corridors of stone, the crimson crystals overhead throwing a pale illumination. From time to time they passed through wide galleries, some even larger than the chamber of the undead. Often bones and rusting weapons littered the floors of those chambers, and Ridmark watched for more undead creatures. Yet they encountered no other creatures, living or dead, in the catacombs of Urd Morlemoch. 

“Where are we going?” said Arandar.

“Up,” said Ridmark. 

“You don’t know?” said Arandar.

“Not that the moment, no,” said Ridmark. “The layout of the catacombs has changed since my last visit.” He glanced at Jager. “Evidently the Warden did not limit his redecorating to simply the outer chambers.”

“How thoughtful of him to consider his guests,” said Jager.

“Then we could wander these galleries until we die of thirst?” said Arandar.

“It is possible,” said Ridmark. Arandar scowled at that. “But we have ample water with us, and we know how to find our way back. Unless the Warden’s power extends to rearranging the maze with us inside of it.”

“I doubt it,” said Caius. “To rearrange the interior of Urd Morlemoch so thoroughly without destroying the hill was a staggering feat of engineering. If he used magic to accomplish it, certainly Calliande and Mara would sense it first.”

“We keep going up,” said Ridmark, pointing. The corridor ended in a broad staircase that rose higher into the hill, the crimson light gleaming off the steps. “Eventually we will find an entrance that leads to the surface. From there we make our way to the Warden’s tower.”

“We must also find Truthseeker,” said Arandar. “It could be anywhere in this maze.”

“Likely it is somewhere within the Warden’s tower,” said Ridmark. “A soulblade is a weapon of such surpassing power that I doubt the Warden would let it lie where Judicaeus Carhaine was slain.”

“If you say so,” said Arandar, his doubt plain.

“Fear not, sir knight,” said Calliande. “I shall be able to sense the weapon as we draw near to it.” 

“Or we shall simply challenge the Warden for it,” said Ridmark.

They reached the top of the stairs, and Ridmark froze.

He did not like the gallery that awaited them.  

It was a long, high gallery of white stone, red crystals gleaming in the apex of the arches high overhead, little different than the others they had already seen. Yet the subtle differences nagged at Ridmark. A raised walkway of stone, about three or four feet higher than the rest of the gallery, led from the top of the stairs to the archway at the far wall. The walkway and the recessed floor looked peculiarly shiny, as if they had been cleaned often. Even stranger, the walls bore hundreds of tiny black holes, each one no larger than Ridmark’s thumb. He looked up and saw a single small balcony near the vaulted ceiling, ringed in an ornate railing of blue dark elven steel. 

As if the Warden could stand there and watch whatever went on in this chamber. 

“What are you looking for?” said Jager at last.

“Metal plates,” said Ridmark. “Anything that could conceal a machine. I think this room is a large mechanical trap.”

“Like the chamber of blades in Urd Dagaash,” said Gavin.

“Or the flood chamber in Thainkul Dural,” said Morigna.

“Do not remind me,” said Calliande. “We were nearly killed in both places.” 

In Thainkul Dural Ridmark had carried Morigna as she bent her will upon the dvargirs’ pet mzrokar, holding the monstrous animal in place until they could clear the flood trap. He remembered how she had felt in his arms as she strained to hold her spell in place, which made him think of how she had felt lying in his arms, her breath and body hot against his…

It was not surprising that he would think about that now, given that this room likely held death. 

“I do not see anything that looks likely,” said Jager. “No plates of either dvargirish or dwarven steel.”

“Caius,” said Ridmark. “Your kindred are more familiar with mechanical contrivances.” 

“This resembles no trap of the dwarven kindred,” said Caius. “At least none that I have seen with my own eyes. And I have seen no traps like this in any of the dark elven ruins it has been my misfortune to visit.” He tapped the archway. “No hidden door. Nor a crack to conceal one.”

Jager shrugged. “I suppose that entire stone slab could fall to seal off the chamber, though it is six feet thick.”

“Mara?” said Ridmark. “Did the Traveler have anything like this?”

Mara shook her head. “The Traveler lives almost entirely outdoors. He keeps his court in various stone circles scattered around Nightmane Forest. There are a few dark elven ruins among the trees, but he uses them to store his treasures. Certainly I never saw the inside of one.” 

“Perhaps the room simply isn’t trapped,” said Calliande. 

“Those holes could shoot poisoned darts,” said Gavin.

“They’re too low,” said Jager. “The darts would bounce off the side of the walkway. A danger if you were foolish enough to stroll up to those holes and stick a finger inside, but I hope no one here is that foolish.”