The Hidden Realm: Book 04 - Ennodius (27 page)

The Dwarf turned into a smaller tunnel on the right before they had gone very far. The passageway ended in a large room where the Dwarf miners had evidently stored their equipment and taken their rest, for there were picks and shovels stacked against the walls and rows of tables in the center of the room. Fresh water gushed from a brass spigot in the wall on their right, splashing into a large stone basin before vanishing into some hidden drain.

“We can rest here for a bit until we are certain that there are no dragons about,” said Ascilius to Elerian.

“I do not like the look of that shaft in the far wall,” said Elerian, pointing to the entrance to a tunnel in the far wall of the room. There was something about its dark depths which made him uneasy.

 “It is only a passageway leading down into the mines, Elerian,” said Ascilius reassuringly. “You may be assured that there is nothing down there that will trouble us. If anything, that passageway increases our security, for it provides us with a way out if we must retreat unexpectedly from this room.”

Elerian was not convinced, but he held his tongue, for he knew Ascilius would only scoff at his unease, blaming them on his dislike of being underground. Completely at ease, Ascilius lay down to sleep on one of the tabletops after extinguishing his mage light. Even if he had been tired, Elerian knew that he could never have slept in that room. Sitting down on a bench, he lit his own mage light, small enough to illuminate the room but not bright enough to ruin his eyes for the darkness which filled the tunnels leading out of the room. With his mage light hovering in the air above his head, Elerian kept a wary eye on the entrances to both passageways.

Tonare, as unconcerned as Ascilius, lay down in the center of the room, curling himself into a ball. Worn down by privation and danger, his belly full of biscuits, he slept more deeply, perhaps, than he should have, for when Elerian thought he heard something stirring in the depths of the mineshaft, the dentire never moved.

“My imagination must be playing tricks on me,” thought Elerian to himself when he glanced at the dentire and saw that he still slept.

Turning back toward the mineshaft entrance, Elerian looked into the opening once more, starting badly when a set of luminous eyes suddenly appeared in the depths of the tunnel.

THE SPADIX

Elerian’s mage light did not illuminate the inky blackness in the depths of the tunnel, so he had no idea what sort of creature he was looking at.

Other sets of eyes, some four feet off the floor and others less than three feet, joined the first pair, shining like polished silver in the darkness. A sudden wild screech, very like the yowling of a cat, split the air. Even as Elerian drew his knife and shouted a warning to Ascilius and Tonare, a swarm of furry bodies, some running on two legs others on all fours, spilled out of the tunnel entrance.

“Kill them. Strip the flesh from their bones!” they encouraged each other in high pitched, sibilant voices, leaving no doubt about their murderous intent as they bounded into the room.

Behind Elerian, Ascilius sprang to his feet on the tabletop where he had made his bed. His mind still fogged with sleep, he rushed forward with a wild yell, his ax haft clenched in his right hand and promptly plummeted head first toward the floor. With a fierce, rumbling roar, Tonare rushed by his prone form.

The strange creatures invading the room closed in on Elerian first. He staggered and almost went down as they hurled themselves recklessly onto his chest and legs. As he lashed out with the long knife in his right hand, Elerian heard their long black claws scrape across the plates reinforcing the leather of his shirt as they strove to sink their talons into his flesh.

One of the creatures on his chest suddenly raised its ugly, round head to the level of his face. Elerian felt its hot breath on his face and had a quick glimpse of slanted yellow eyes and a wide, flat nose before the creature’s mouth gaped open, revealing outsize fangs and rows of sharp white teeth. Before the creature could snap at his face, Elerian stabbed it in the throat with the knife in his right hand. A high-pitched screech shattered the air as the sharp steel of his blade sank into soft flesh.

Reaching with his left hand, Elerian closed it over the long left ear of another of the creatures clinging to his chest. When he tugged and twisted with all his strength, the catlike creature squealed, but refused to let go its hold. Instead, it sank fangs which felt like hot nails into his wrist. Meanwhile, strong, wiry arms wrapped around Elerian’s right arm and around his legs, threatening to topple him onto the floor. As he fought to stay on his feet, Elerian had a quick glimpse of Ascilius and Tonare, both of them buried under a squirming heap of black and gray furry bodies.

“There are too many of them,” thought Elerian to himself as more of the creatures rushed into the room from the tunnel entrance. Blocking out the mayhem around him for a moment, he directed his power at the small mage light hovering over his head, expanding it from a spark the size of a firefly to a fist-sized ball of light that suddenly illuminated every corner of the room. As the piercing rays of the mage light lanced into their eyes, the creatures in the room howled in distress, abandoning their ferocious attack to clap furry, five fingered paws over their faces.

Tonare was the first to shake himself free of the creatures that had gotten ahold of him. Blood streaming from dozens of scratches that crisscrossed his sleek hide, he bit the furred shapes around him, each snap of his powerful jaws crushing their bones as if they were soft as butter.

Narrowing his eyes to slits, Elerian kicked at the creatures that had fallen to the floor around him when they slackened their grip on his body in order to protect their sensitive eyes. He achieved a very satisfying distance and trajectory with each blow of his feet, punting several of his attackers almost into the tunnel entrance, for although the furry creatures were strong, they were light and lacking in substance.

Furry bodies suddenly began flying through the air past Elerian’s head, accompanied by a stream of unkind words from Ascilius. The Dwarf had regained his feet, setting aside his ax in favor of using his hands and powerful arms. Some of the creatures that he flung through the air flew into the tunnel entrance, but most struck the walls of the room with a sodden crunch before sliding lifeless to the floor.

Fearing for their lives, the creatures that were still alive fled blindly back into the safety and comforting darkness of the tunnel with Tonare in hot pursuit, their yowling screams and the dentire’s roars fading quickly into the distance.

“Next time, I will pick the resting place,” said Elerian dryly to Ascilius as he dimmed his mage light again. With his right hand, he wiped away the blood flowing from a deep cut on his left cheek.

“They were only spadix!” said Ascilius disgustedly. He still had a red glint in his eyes, and although he was also covered with cuts and scratches like Elerian, he looked more than ready to rush into the tunnel after the surviving spadix. Only the knowledge that they would vanish like a puff of smoke in the wind restrained him. “They are cowards who sneak about in the dark places of the earth, presenting little threat to a strong, well-armed Dwarf,” he continued angrily. “I wonder if they were not already skulking around in the mines even before the dragon came, for the earth has its own natural passageways and caverns. My people might have tunneled into one of them, unwittingly creating an opening for them. They must have been scavenging off the dragons’ leavings. Since there are naught but bones left for them to chew on now, it was probably hunger that drove them to attack us.”

“Cowards or not, they came close to finishing the three of us,” pointed out Elerian. “If my light had not blinded them, they might now be gnawing our bones.”

“They had the element of surprise on their side,” scoffed Ascilius. “If any of them escape Tonare, they will not dare attack us now that we are aware of them,” he said angrily, glaring into the depths of the mineshaft as if daring the spadix to resume the battle.

“What is your plan once Tonare returns?” asked Elerian to distract Ascilius from doing anything rash.

“We will go to my forge on the second level. There, I will make a sword for you and a hammer for me that will even the odds between us and the dragons.”

“What sort of weapon could do that?” asked Elerian, thinking of the sword he had broken on the red dragon’s scales.

“Magical weapons,” replied Ascilius, “the kinds of weapons that have not existed for centuries.”

“How can you say that?” asked Elerian in a puzzled voice. “Have you forgotten that we both saw a Dwarf smith making a magical sword in the Goblins’ mines?”

“That was only a minor blade, possessing only a fraction of the power that will be contained in the weapons that I propose to make,” said Ascilius disparagingly.

Just then, Tonare emerged from the tunnel, licking the blood from his jaws with a long tongue.

“I slew some of those who ran, but my nose tells me that there are many more in the mines,” he said in his rough voice to Elerian and Ascilius. “We had best leave this place.”

At once, Elerian and Ascilius hoisted their packs onto their backs. As they left the room, Elerian’s mage light illuminating their way, Elerian turned his head to look back and again saw eyes in the tunnel. Tearing, crunching sounds came to his sharp ears.

“The spadix are eating their dead,” he thought disgustedly to himself as he followed Ascilius and Tonare into the tunnel that led out of the room.

Turning left at the end of the passageway, the three companions followed the large tunnel that led into the mines back to the stables, pausing under the arch of the entryway. All three of them strained their ears to catch any sound, either in front of them or behind, but they heard nothing.

With Ascilius leading the way, they finally set out at for the small ramp that they had used to enter the stables, walking warily through the darkness with only the dim rays of Elerian’s mage light to illuminate their way. Elerian glanced often over his shoulders to see if they were being followed. Despite the deep silence that pervaded the stables, broken only by the soft tramp of Ascilius’s booted feet and the click of Tonare’s toenails, he found it easy to picture a mob of spadix creeping along in the inky darkness behind them, ready to spring on them at any moment.

“I will be thankful when we quit this gloomy place,” he thought to himself when they finally reached the small ramp that led to the second level.

After ascending the ramp without incident, depending on Tonare to warn them of the presence of any dragons that might be about, Ascilius led his two companions through a number of smaller service tunnels before finally stopping before a heavy iron door hanging partially open. A crossed hammer and ax were carved in relief in the stone above it. A twisted, tarnished brass holder hung next to the carving. The glass shards of the globe that had held its mage light were scattered around the floor of the tunnel beneath it. Tonare sniffed carefully at the opening behind the door.

“There is nothing alive beyond the door,” he said in his rough voice.

Ascilius immediately opened the door, revealing a large room almost thirty feet wide and deep with a ceiling about eight feet high. Along the right hand wall was a stone stairs that led to an upper level. In the center of the room was a large black anvil tipped over on its side and up against the left hand wall was a stone forge filled with debris. From the glassy appearance of the forge’s surface, Elerian suspected that it had been magically hardened. Bars of iron, steel, copper, and brass littered the stone floor, which was covered with lumps of hard coal spilled from coarse sacks that had been torn open by clawed feet. Here and there among the bars and mounds of coal were metal working tools and all sorts of half-finished weapons. As far as Elerian could tell, everything of value had been taken from the room.

“This was my workshop before I was captured by the Goblins,” said Ascilius sadly. “I labored many happy hours in this forge room. I specialized in weapons as you can see,” he said, pointing to the swords and axes mixed in with the debris on the floor. My work was much sought after in those days, and I traveled often to deliver my wares. Tarsius, Ancharia, Hesperia, and even the wild lands of the West were no strangers to my footsteps. Now I am little more than a beggar in my own home, and Eboria is likely to rule in my city forever despite my brave words in the vigilarum,” he said dejectedly to Elerian, for the ruin of his shop had filled him with a sudden gloom.

Stepping lightly through the debris on the floor, Elerian crossed the room to the half open iron door on the far side. His mage light illuminated the next room which had suffered as much damage as the first. The glass in the one large window to the right of the door was broken out, and the front door stood wide open, hanging askew from its bottom hinge. Everything in the room had been overturned or broken in the search for treasure.

“We will need to secure the forge room if we are to stay here and work,” said Elerian, to Ascilius as he closed the door that led to the front of the shop, its twisted hinges squealing loudly. The lock had been burst apart on the stout iron door, but otherwise, it was still intact if somewhat dented. There were two iron brackets set in the stone on either side of the door, and a heavy iron cross bar lay on the floor to the left of the doorway. Elerian picked it up easily, dropping it into the brackets before standing back and surveying the door with a critical eye. 

 “Can you strengthen the door further with a spell?” Elerian asked Ascilius.

 “Of course I can,” said the Dwarf rousing himself from the dark mood that had overtaken him. Raising his right arm, he pointed his hand at the door. With his third eye, Elerian saw a small golden orb fly from Ascilius’s fingers. When it struck the upper panel of the door, it briefly covered the entire doorway with a cloak of golden light before fading away. “We can still open it if we must, but the dragons will have to break the stone around the door if they are to force it now,” said Ascilius in a satisfied voice. 

After closing the door that led into the service tunnel behind the shop, Ascilius set the crossbar in place before sealing the doorway with another closing spell.

“Your spell is more effective than anything I could cast,” noted Elerian after testing the door by pulling strongly on the handle with his right hand. Despite his best efforts, the door sat firmly in its frame, as if it had been welded in place.

“That is not surprising,” replied Ascilius. “Doors and all their properties are a specialty of the Dwarves.”

All too familiar with Elerian’s penchant for acquiring new spells and the lengths that he would go to to obtain them, Ascilius gave up his charm without being asked rather than have Elerian badger him relentlessly in order to obtain it. After giving Elerian a moment to record his new spell in his book, Ascilius walked over to the wall that stood beneath the stairs. After stopping near the high point of the wall, he spoke a single word in the Dwarf tongue. The outline of a door suddenly appeared in the smooth stone of the wall, outlined by a thin thread of silvery argentum. Ascilius pushed on it lightly with his right hand, and the stone panel swung open on silent hinges, revealing a hidden room.