The Dragon of Time: Gods and Dragons (24 page)

In the cavernous part of the journey, N’Giwah
didn’t appear to be preoccupied by anything and maintained a rapid
pace through the twisting subterranean passage. There were no real
turns to make; it was a straight shot if a little winding. The air
beneath the surface of Alduheim whirled about them intermittently,
like some breathing beast was on its last legs. There was a slight
putrid-sweet smell to it, something akin to mounds of moldy apples
left out for cattle. During the few minutes in that cave, Scar’s
crew let the Tiamatish wander ahead. After the slope came and went,
N’Giwah came to a halt, said something to his women, and walked
back towards Scar.

“This is the entrance to some kind of study,”
the dark skinned warrior claimed in a whisper while hurrying the
crew along. He rubbed his eyes and turned away from the torchlight
before saying, “From what we have been able to surmise, it is a
section spanning a few rooms devoted to a form of ancient
magic.”

“I should like to see these rooms,” Scar
whispered back. “There is writing about this magic?”

N’Giwah motioned with his head to follow, and
slowly the Tiamatish went through a craggy opening the height and
width of a normal man. Scar and the shieldmen had some trouble, but
nothing so serious that some swears and grunts didn’t solve. Beyond
the opening was a gray, stone hallway. The torchlight, though
distorting the color, gave them the impression it may have once
been white. The hallway connected some doorways in the vicinity
before ending in blackness at both ends.

Scar followed N’Giwah into a room. They
marched over a dry rotting door, which sat on the stone floor. The
decorative pillars built on either side of the opening rose to
about seven feet before supporting an arch carved to resemble
vines. The ceiling was somewhere up there above them, but in the
darkness and even with Ezlo’s torch, Scar’s group couldn’t see
it.

The room N’Giwah had led them into had rows
of dry rotted benches and small tables. At one end of the room was
a squat podium and ruined, stone lectern. It was evident, to some
at least, that it was a room for listening and taking notes.
Whomever was teaching or preaching stood behind the lectern.
Students sat in the pews to write. Scar liked that people of
Alduheim wrote. The individuals of the groups crossed each other’s
paths a few times, running their hands on the furniture, walls, and
ruined etchings in wood that either still clung crookedly to the
walls, or sat in disregard on the ground.

“Where is the writing?” Scar asked.

Before an answer came, the sound of heavy
dust or powdered stones leaving the ceiling and accumulating on the
floor disrupted their attention and most everyone looked up. Ezlo
raised his torch then stood on a stone pew and searched higher. Up
in the arcades, small statuettes of soldiers in typical leather
armors were sculpted into the beams, but there was no indication of
what had caused the dust to fall.

“Some of the writing is in the next room,”
N’Giwah finally replied.

Shuffling feet kicked up more grime. They
paced from one side of the room, through a smaller, rectangular
doorway, also with door heaved onto the floor, and into a
connecting room with smashed shelves and bookcases. There was
parchment and actual bound books torn, rotted, eaten, and scattered
about. Rat droppings littered the ground.

“Careful, Ezlo,” Marlayne chastised.

The Kulshedran smiled meekly as he righted
himself. Ezlo had bent over to look at a book with the picture of a
Dragon on one cover, and the torchlight got a little close to
parchment.

“You would have done well to bring gas lamps
from the city,” Shamara whispered, her teeth still clenched around
her pipe. “Since your eyes cannot find their way in the
darkness.”

It was a true enough statement, but with no
way to rectify the problem other than being extra careful not to
light themselves on fire. Scar had a quick flashback of the
Kulshedran battlement in blazes. He rubbed his butt once
considering what another flash fire might do to the other cheek. As
they continued to peruse, N’Giwah led Scar to a square, stone dais
tilted at about twenty degrees and with a lip at the bottom. It
held an open tome at an angle so that anyone in passing might read
some passages.

“Can you read it?” N’Giwah asked with an
expectant and hopeful stare.

Scar held his gaze for a moment. The
torchlight glimmered in the Tiamatish’s eyes a strange blue and
orange reminiscent of light on the eyes of a deer in a dark forest.
Then Scar looked to the book, approached it, wiped the dust away,
and to his own surprise, he read a few passages:
Though the
Dragon cults are prevailing, the key in their demise is the Dragon
gems; odd jewels that glimmer with a faint light of their own.
These gems are used to break the boundary between the realm of man
and that of the beasts.

Scar’s eyes were wide and he could not pull
them from the pages as he replied, “I can read…I can read it.”

“What does it say?” N’Giwah asked with great
curiosity.

“That there were men who worshiped the
Dragons. It would seem they communicated via some strange gems…have
you heard of such a thing?”

They all remained quiet while the troops
gathered around to discern the reason for pallid faces.

“No,” the Tiamatish man said after some
thought. “I have never heard of this gem.”

“Marlayne? Borta?” Scar addressed them.

“A gem?” Borta asked.

“To commune with Dragons?” Scar
clarified.

They were dumbstruck, so Scar continued
reading. The passages described the gems as being the essence of
the Dragon and that each Dragon had one, which he or she passed on
to the leader of the cults. That leader would presumably spend time
in meditation speaking to his or her Dragon Lord and defeating the
cult leaders was as much part of the plan in saving men from
enslavement as defeating the immortal beasts themselves.

Scar had to surmise that acquiring such a gem
had been instrumental in winning whatever temporary peace was had.
He started to turn pages and read more and more, but N’Giwah placed
a hand on his wrist. With a point of his nose to the ceiling, he
redirected Scar’s attention. More powder and loose rock fell from
above.

“There are forces fighting above us,” Pater
said.

The Kulshedran held fast to his helmet as he
tilted his head to listen. Sounds of battle were erupting and
bleeding through the stonework. Shamara closed the book and with
both hands presented it to Scar, who took it, held it tightly then
passed it off to Marlayne. She slid it into a travel pack.

“Let us move,” N’Giwah suggested. “This is
all very important information to be sure, but will do us little
good if destroyed in a fight. Besides, we have to face the
paladin.”

Nods of ascent washed over the crowd, and
they followed the dark skinned warrior out of that room, down the
stone corridor—torchlight wavering over smashed statues—and to the
end of the walkway where another hallway adjoined at the corner.
Perhaps this is my home after all
, Scar thought.
I read
the language…yet there is nothing in my memory of this place or of
anyone teaching me to read and write.

His thoughts subsided as they continued in
file passing more doorways, some of which still held their doors in
place. N’Giwah eventually led them to a set of stairs at the end of
the newly traversed passageway. The stairs diverged side-by-side;
one set went up and the other further down. Keeping the lead, the
Tiamatish man went down, the rest following in his footsteps. The
sounds of battle had subsided, yet the occasional echo of body
weight landing flatly on stone, or clashing steel rang, followed by
cries of pain and victory.

“Our men are dying up there,” Jayna
murmured.

“And so are as many of theirs,” Bosen
answered. “Keep your wits about you. We’re not here to engage the
Khmerans.”

Jayna spat at the ground, readjusted her
plated armor, and kept pace. Beyond the stairs was a duplicate set
of corridors. Marlayne hesitated when they were led into another
room. There were bodies on the ground, and the ripe scent of death
weighed heavily upon them. Ezlo shined his torch to the floor.
There were a few dozen corpses; Kulshedrans, Khmerans, and two
Tiamatish.

“This done by the Paladin of Mekosh?” Bosen
asked.

Lortho kicked a Khmeran corpse, making his
armor jingle loudly like a stack of silver dishes an angry servant
dropped onto a table. That drew scowls and he shrugged
indifferently.

“No,” Hija said. “This is the work of men
warring for their kings, and some of us were just unfortunate
enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Her bitterness was lost on no one. In
pressing on, it became obvious they were in some kind of storage
chamber. There were ancient crates, barrels, and cases of unknown
contents. They exited that room, made a left down a hall, and into
another room with tools, farming implements, stones, steel, wood,
and linens that had seen better days and fewer mites. Pater pushed
aside a cobweb and prodded at a dry rotted set of bellows.

Leaving behind the aged remnants of a dead
culture, the explorers veered through more corridors and to another
set of stairs leading down. The stench of death was even heavier on
the stale air.

“You don’t know ripe until you’ve come across
death underground,” Delton joked.

No one laughed. It wasn’t very funny to those
who were knee high in corpses and a hundred feet below fresh air.
More bodies were revealed by Ezlo’s torch. They were over a dozen
yards away, but the fire reflected off the steel studs of
Kulshedran armor as well as Khmeran swords.

Scar stopped and rolled his shoulders before
looking at the ground. It was bare earth and dusty. He toed at the
footprints of previous tourists.

“Where are we?” he asked.

“The sewers,” Marlayne answered. “They are
similar in design at Genova, the capital of Closicus.”

No one else spoke for a time. Walking between
pylons as thick as a man for the better part of thirty minutes,
they waded through stagnant puddles and a handful more corpses.
Ezlo’s light didn’t reveal any walls, not even the stairs long
behind them. The sounds of battle reemerged, this time, as a dull
stampede overhead. N’Giwah motioned to them with his hand to move
quickly. They jogged noisily for a minute then reached a wall of
roughly hewn stone. It looked like one solid piece.

N’Giwah tensed with his right ear away from
the group towards the far wall from where they had entered. He
sniffed a few times like a wild animal picking up the scent of
prey.

“Khmerans,” he whispered.

“How do you know?” Jayna barked.

“They cover their skins with oils to mask
their stench…unlike Kulshedrans,” the Tiamatish leader grinned.

“What?” Delton asked. “The Tiamatish smell
like orange blossoms?”

“We do not keep old sweat in heavy clothing
or armor,” N’Giwah reassured him.

Delton inconspicuously lifted his arm to
sniff at his pit.

“Have the Khmerans entered Alduheim?” Scar
asked.

“It appears so,” N’Giwah replied.

With that response, Hija took her bone knives
from her skirt and stretched her legs and back.

“How did the Khmerans enter?” Bosen
asked.

“From above us,” Shamara said. “There are
many entrances throughout the old castle. We had hoped our new
passage would keep us safe while we explored, but these
bloodthirsty heathens would rather kill than learn, and so they
have hacked their way inside.”

“Why not just seal it off,” Borta said more
than asked. “You say your magic can mold stone. I have seen it
twist the posts of Malababwen architecture.”

“And risk blocking our only escape route?”
N’Giwah snarled. “What if the enemy enters from our own passage? We
have to keep a point of exit, and besides, molding stone takes
time.”

With that explanation now fully understood by
everyone, they returned to silence. A moment passed then two, and
the stampeding of angry feet grew louder and closer.

“They will see the torch,” Hija whispered
forcefully.

“Not putting it out,” Ezlo fired back. “I
want to see my enemy.”

“We can’t fight in the dark,” Delton
added.

“They’ll have their own torches anyway,
Hija,” Shamara sighed.

As the men drew steel and tensed or relaxed,
depending on their proclivity, a glow appeared in the distance. The
Khmerans did have their own torches, and as the light grew from the
opening, two dozen Khmeran warriors in robes of green, blue, red,
buff, and brown emerged. Most of them had a sword in each hand;
long, thin, curved blades- poor for penetrating armored plates, but
excellent for parting flesh from bone.

“Kulshedrans,” one Khmeran yelped. “He was
right!”

Scar’s party was confused about the
implication of someone having been right, but they fanned out with
the shieldmen stepping up to block the rest from the brunt of an
attack. Scar reached out to snatch Marlayne’s sleeve and keep her
against the wall. She hunkered down with the old woman. When Scar
turned to grab Borta, he saw the man had wandered off to a
corpse.

“Get back here,” Scar called out as the
Khmerans took formation.

The enemy broke off into three groups: an
advancing force of high-pitched screamers with freely flowing long,
dark hair, and brandishing steel, and two other groups of five each
that were comprised of four warriors guarding the two—men or women
as it was hard to tell with Khmerans—in the buff colored robes.

While the screaming fighters drowned out the
sound of monotonous chanting from the two under protection, Delton
and Lortho vibrated and wavered under torchlight before their
shield magic erupted. The rippling blasts knocked over the
advancing Khmerans. A few on either side weren’t affected by the
radius of impact, and the Kulshedran sword fighters went out to
greet them.