The Legend of Asahiel: Book 03 - The Divine Talisman (21 page)

Risen up to swallow them whole.

The dragon beat its wings, hissing in defiance. Thrakkon and his fellow passengers could only watch, mesmerized, as the leviathan lunged ever higher, reaching in hungry pursuit—an eruption so swift, not even Killangrathor could hope to climb away in time.

But the dragon did not have to. Suddenly, impossibly, the ocean-bound creature reached the end of its chain. At the height of its ascent, titanic jaws snapped shut like the collision of drifting landmasses. A striking serpent denied, it fell away then, back toward the sea. As it did so, it unleashed a sound no serpent could make, bellowing a roar that seemed to stretch the very fabric of the heavens.

As its unfathomable mass slipped back into the seething ocean, tides tore at one another in an effort to seal the resulting rift. A second stream of geysers exploded skyward, slapping at one another with enough height and force to wet Thrakkon’s lips with salty spray. Only upon their descent was the breach in the ocean’s surface sealed, its hidden horror buried once more.

For several moments, Thrakkon eyed the distant landscape as it shimmered beneath them, marveling silently while its surface continued to roil. A catastrophic encounter. For unless the creature below could mend the tides it had unleashed, its violent emergence was liable to raise waves that would destroy entire villages and carve a new face onto the seaward bluffs of distant lands.

Thrakkon delighted in the thought. Even as the ocean calmed, he knew its wind-combed surface to be a facade. Though hundreds of leagues lay behind them, and thousands more lay ahead, the devastation was en route.

Even more exhilarating than the thought of hundreds being caught unawares by the abrupt and merciless fury of the sea, however, was the cherished dream of untold millions falling prey to this behemoth’s feral hunger. Not even Killangrathor had the capacity to shred as many coils or sow as much fear. And while there should have been no doubt in the Illysp lord’s mind, the centuries of languor had clearly left this beast of the deep as anxious as any of Thrakkon’s kin to feed.

He continued to search the waves, eager now for the agitated titan to show itself again. When he realized that it wouldn’t, he settled back upon his perch
and relaxed his grip on the Sword. His companions eased around him, though he could sense their savage pleasure, akin to his own.

Killangrathor stretched his wings and glided tirelessly westward, pleased by his own insolence. Thrakkon, meanwhile, wiped the taste of the ocean from his lips and continued to smile down upon the sea as it glimmered in the noonday sun.

Fear not
, he promised his angry friend below.
Your time comes soon.

“H
OLD!
T
HAT’S FAR ENOUGH NOW.”

Htomah stopped. The words had been spoken in Gohran, but he knew that tongue as well as any.

He turned slowly, and Crag beside him. Neither was surprised by the trio of Hrothgari staring back at them from the murky depths of the tunnel. The patrolling sentries had been trailing them for some time now—with all the stealth of a herd of goats. Even Crag had sensed them, though when the Tuthari had turned to mumble a warning, Htomah had placed a reassuring hand on his companion’s knotted shoulder, preferring to let the trackers reveal themselves in their own due time.

“Strength to you, friends of the shadow-earth,” the Entient replied in the Mountain Tongue. “We bear you no malice.”

The dwarves continued to scowl. All three were outfitted in layers of wool and leather, with iron bands about the arms and wrists. Their heavy cloaks had been pushed back, to reveal the countless gems and minerals with which their tunics and belts and bracers were studded—radiant in the light of glow lanterns hung about their necks. The lanterns themselves were filled with luminous minerals set to shining by thornweed firebrands—the ideal wick in that they burned extremely slowly while giving off virtually no smoke. By contrast, the acrid smoke from the torch Crag had insisted upon carrying filled the narrow corridor.

The sentries to either side held spiked hammers at the ready. One of them murmured to the one in the middle, commenting on the size of Crag’s battle-axe. Htomah marked the concern, but did not speak to it, keeping his gaze locked with that of the trio’s toifeam.

“You belong to the surface,” the leader grumbled. One hand rested upon the hilt of his own hammer, slung at his waist, while the other twisted a knob on his glowstone lantern, adjusting its tiny shutter and redirecting its light toward Crag. “And you are not Hrothgari.”

“Nor are we
skatchykem
,” Htomah assured him, using the word their people had adopted to describe the Illychar—
harvested dead
, translated loosely into Entian. At the very mention, the third dwarf warded himself with the sign of the Smith. “He is Tuthari, cousin and kin from across the seas. I am Entient. In another time, King Vagorum counted my father a friend.”

Again the first dwarf, whose yellow beard shone green in the blue-tinged light of his glow lamp, turned to his leader with a bitter word. The toifeam, however, held forth a palm to silence his protest.

“King Vagorum no longer rules us.”

“Vagorum blows forever amid the bellows winds of Achthium’s Earthforge,” Htomah acknowledged, “fanning the flames of a thousand stars and more. King Hreidmar watches now over His people of this realm. With your permission, we would pay him homage.”

“With what? You bear no gifts that I can see.”

“Why, I bring him this good dwarf, for one, the last of a scattered flock.” He paused as Yellowbeard snorted, and turned his glare upon that one. When he spoke again, he added an echo to his voice that seemed to multiply upon the jagged walls. “What is more, I bear knowledge of the plague that has found its way to you, and fell warning of what shall happen should your people fail to rally against it.”

The toifeam stared, unblinking. The dwarf to his left, a redbeard, allowed his cloak’s folds to slip forward around his mineral-studded leathers, as if to hide himself in the tunnel gloom. Even Yellowbeard, it seemed, had run dry of responses, glaring sullenly, hands flexing upon his weapon’s haft. In the resulting stillness, Crag’s torch crackled.

“And does this Entient have a name?” the toifeam asked finally.

“I am called Htomah.”

T
HE TOIFEAM LED THEM AFTER
that. He did not offer his own name, nor did Htomah ask for it. Crag kept silent the entire time. The Tuthari did not even complain when they demanded that he extinguish his torch and its choking cloud of smoke. Htomah had warned his companion that the Hrothgari would not take kindly to besmirching the air within their tunnels, but Crag had refused to travel blind in that inkwell blackness, despite the Entient’s claim that he could lead them just as well without any exterior light source.

Yellowbeard and Redbeard marched along at the rear, hammers in hand. Htomah paid little mind to the grim gazes they leveled at his back. He did not fault them their mistrust. Though the Illysp had not spread throughout this underground domain nearly to the extent they had elsewhere, the Hrothgari had seen enough to recognize the nature of their threat. When brother was slaying brother, there seemed little reason to trust those who clearly did not belong.

Aside from that, Htomah had lived his entire life in shadow, dealing with matters that even long-lived mortals like these of the Gorgathar family could scarcely comprehend. Thus, he was no stranger to others’ mistrust.

Guides notwithstanding, his journey continued as it had before, through a twisting maze of cramped tunnels that, for the most part, were naturally laid. Now and then, sections had been smoothed or reshaped by dwarven hands, allowing passages to intersect more directly, or to steer away from dangerous chasms. But, for the untrained eye, it would be difficult to determine where nature’s work had ended and the Hrothgari’s had begun.

They had hours to travel yet, though he and Crag had been scuffing along for nearly an entire day already. In truth, he had been surprised to come across
this particular band of sentries so near the surface. While the Hrothgari made numerous routine excursions to the world above, this was most definitely a sentry patrol, and not one sent to scout, map, or forage. This was a people not easily alarmed, yet what little they had seen of the Illysp had alarmed them. Good. Perhaps that meant his pleas would not go unheard.

One way or another, he had to make them see. For if the Hrothgari failed to act as he would have them, he was not sure where else he might turn. He could attempt to consult Ravar, but that would constitute an unconscionable risk, given what little he knew about the creature’s role in this. Long had the Entients known of His presence, yet even they could only guess at His designs. That His awakening was somehow tied to the emergence of the Illysp seemed evident. Whether linked for good or for ill had, thus far, been impossible to discern.

A fool he was, Htomah thought again, for not taking action sooner. A wiser man might have set a corrective course the moment the Illychar were unleashed and Ravar had begun to stir, rather than observing it all from afar as some kind of natural oddity. The distance his kind kept from the affairs of this earth had been meant to lend clarity to their vision, not cloud it.

None of which could be helped now, he reminded himself. For all their vaunted insight and understanding of universal mysteries, none of them could unmake the past. Better that he keep his focus upon the challenges that lay ahead.

It remained difficult to do so, however, as he marched along those subterranean corridors, many of which seemed so much like his own. Thinking of Whitlock only caused him to wonder if he would ever see the vaults of his home again, or if he, like Algorath of old, had made himself a permanent outcast to all he had once held dear. Such courageous defiance. Had he not heard the tale of the other’s noble yet necessary sacrifice, he might never have dared to follow form. But his own would mean less than naught if he did not find a way to make a difference, as Algorath had. Ideals might stir hearts and open minds, but it was deeds that changed the world.

The darkness continued to press them, as if spilled forth from the caves and pockets branching off to either side. In addition to extinguishing Crag’s torch, the Hrothgari sentries had dimmed their own lanterns, damping the flues to conserve the flaming thornweed wicks. Those at his back were mere slits, while the toifeam’s scarcely revealed the path at their feet.

That suited Htomah just fine, who saw better by tuning his vision fully to the underground spectrum, rather than fighting between that and natural light. With only the soft mineral glow ahead of him, he was able to detect every pit and crag and alcove as surely as he would in the harsh light of the sun.

Would that he could see their future as clearly.

H
E WAS STILL SEEKING SOLACE
when, hours later, they came upon the Hrothgari city of Ungarveld.

It took some time to win themselves entrance, as their toifeam was forced
to share with a set of stern-faced city warders all that Htomah had imparted back in the tunnels. The Entient had to resist the urge to intervene, for the dwarf captain had misremembered much of it, and forgotten the rest—or else did not think it important enough to mention. According to him, they were but intruders caught prowling the upper tunnels, fled from the skatchykem above. That they might in fact be who they claimed did not seem to have any bearing on the matter, one way or the other.

Eventually, the warders parted as had several other sets encountered earlier, though these ones had insisted their hands be bound before traveling any further. In truth, Htomah had been surprised not to have been thus constrained from the first, and so had submitted without complaint. Crag had glared sourly at these distant cousins of his—and at Htomah—as if wondering now whether his voyage from Yawacor had been a mistake. But once again, the bitter Tuthari had kept his tongue and thoughts to himself.

That resentment gave way to awe, however, the moment they stepped from the tunnel and into the cavern that housed the city proper. Clearly, the Tuthari had never seen anything quite like it. Their guides had brought them in along a side route, near the uppermost tier, giving them a rather splendid view of the subterranean hollow and all of its unique marvels. The walls themselves were dazzling, shot through with veins of luminous minerals, studded with gold and gems and glimmering crystal formations. There were homes, carved into pockets along all sides; terraced roadways, reaching throughout the complex like a thousand frayed strands; and forests of stalagmites and stalactites, including the wondrous and mighty Achthium’s Spear itself. But what amazed his Tuthari comrade more than anything, Htomah suspected, was the sheer number of dwarves, young and old, who bustled about, wearing gem-studded belts and bands that left them striped with iridescence in the blue light of thousands upon thousands of glow lamps. Craftsmen, tradesmen, and artisans of every variety. Miners, cultivators, and herders. Male, female, and even children—whose merry laughter rang upon the walls in stark disregard of all the world’s ills.

Htomah smiled sadly. That the Tuthari should be moved by the sights and sounds and smells of a thriving dwarven culture should not have come to him unexpectedly. A long time had it been since Crag had known such peace—decades since his own people had been harried and scattered, forced to endure famine and war and slaughter. To have been the only one to survive, to wonder if he might never again meet and talk and laugh with one of his own kind…to him, this world, buried as it was, must have seemed like paradise.

They started down a narrow, switchback trail marked now and then with steep steps hewn into the stone—a route of quick, direct access to the cavern floor. Though Crag might have preferred to march the long, winding perimeter, exploring up close the many hidden wonders of which he could gain only a vague sense from afar, that seemed to be precisely what their guides wished to avoid. Htomah, of course, knew that this central cavern was not the half of it, but merely the threshold to a vast network that lay beyond. The Hrothgari
had always been an industrious and enterprising people, defined more by their labors than by their homes and parks. Beyond this central living area, one would find myriad sources of harvest: grassy fields sown on beds of lichen and grazed upon by goats, springwater grottos and streams filled with blind fish and shell creatures, forests of mushrooms, caves from which crushed ore and sulfur and mercury and gemstones were mined, jungles of thornweed, rivers of magma, foundries of iron and steel, crystalline gardens, and so much more. Being herded underground like cave dwellers had forced this people to stretch their talents and adapt themselves in creative ways. Given the size of Crag’s eyes as he attempted to absorb just this small portion of their world, Htomah worried that those eyes might pop right out of the Tuthari’s skull were he to be shown the rest.

They encountered few others along their path of descent, just the occasional patrolling warder and a lone tanner hauling a rolled bundle of bloody goatskin up the staggered heights. Like all dwarves, the old whitebeard was put together like the most gnarled of oak trees—malformed by human standards, yet in no way hampered by the twist and bulge of limb and joint. He nodded warily as they let him pass, then trundled on without huff or groan, despite his heavy load and a waddling gait.

When at last they reached a broad shelf near the cavern floor, they were ushered through a busy marketplace, drawing grim gazes and guarded whispers. The muttered oaths, Htomah noted, were filled more with concern than with any real invective. He might have offered them reassurance of some kind, but thought it best to remain silent and continue playing the role of obedient captive. To them, his very appearance was ill omen enough. Let them believe that whatever threat he posed was well contained.

Near the center of the market grounds, a cluster of pits awaited, covered over by iron grates. A small crowd had begun to gather, but gave way for the nameless toifeam to open the lid to one of the cells.

Crag eyed the pit distastefully, then locked another glare upon Htomah.
Is this really necessary?
he seemed to ask.

“We do not have time for delay,” the Entient agreed.

“That is for His Glory, King Hreidmar, to decide,” the toifeam replied. “If you would have us trust you, I suggest you show us the same courtesy.”

Yellowbeard gave Crag a prod with his hammer. The Tuthari stumped down the rugged slope, his hands still bound behind him, followed by Htomah.

“Mind your skull,” Yellowbeard called out, a moment before the ceiling grate slammed shut.