The Sword Of Erren-dar (Book 2) (36 page)

 Bethro was in the grip of a deluge of belated guilt and
self-doubt. “It’s no use,” he wailed, “I’ve pushed the snake’s nose until my
fingers are sore, just like I did in my dream – but nothing happened! It just
won’t budge!”

 Iska crossed to the snake and began running her hands over
the head projecting from the wall. As her hands travelled downwards over the
exposed fangs, she felt, ever so slightly, a tiny movement in the right fang.
Grasping it firmly, and watched intensely by five pairs of eyes, she twisted
it. It turned though ninety degrees but once again, nothing happened.

 Bethro who had been holding his breath, let it out with a
whoosh. “We’re all going to die in here!” he howled, abandoning Bethro the
Hero.

 The others ignored him but continued watching Iska, who had
crossed to the huge stone disc set into the wall upon which the snake’s body
was carved. Grasping the raised outer coil, she pushed hard.

 “Help me!” she commanded.

 Everyone, even the afflicted Hero, heaved with all their
collective might against the outer coil. Suddenly, with a slight jerk, it began
to pivot. Keeping up the pressure, they slowly forced the ancient stone to
move. It made a grinding, trundling noise as it rotated slowly open to reveal a
dark tunnel beyond.

 
Thump
! Went the door again.

 Eimer peered in. “It’s as dark as hell in there. We are
going to need some light.”

 “I have some candles,” Sareth unexpectedly said. “The
Keeper placed them in my pack and I couldn’t think why until now.”

 
Thump!

 “They won’t light with steel alone. I’ll light some
kindling,” Vesarion offered. But before his hand could even move towards his
pack, without a word, Gorm produced the little sliver box from his pouch and
glumly held it out to him.

 Realising that it was no time for recriminations, Vesarion bit
back words of reproof and taking it from him, began to strike flint against
steel beside the kindling.

 Just as the first tiny flame began to flicker, something
hit the door with such a crash that it jumped on its hinges and something
metallic flew off it and hit the wall.

 “Here,” said Sareth, hastily handing him three candles.

 Vesarion swiftly lit them and bundled his companions
towards the waiting blackness of the tunnel.

 Another crash hit the door and part of one of the bolts shot
off.

 When they were all inside, Vesarion ordered them to help
him close the snake door.

 “But we don’t know where this tunnel goes!” objected Bethro
in a panicky voice.

 “Well you brought us here,” Eimer replied acidly, grimly
heaving against the door. “Besides, it’s not as if we have a choice.”

 The door swung back into place just as with an explosion of
shattering wood, the Red Turog were precipitated into the room.

 Taking a candle from Sareth, Vesarion examined the back of
the door and discovered some sort of latch. Borrowing Eimer’s hunting knife, he
jammed the handle under the mechanism to prevent it being opened from the other
side.

  They all stood in silence within the intimate glow of the
three candles, watching steadfastly the back of the snake door, waiting to hear
the sound of the Red Turog attacking it. But nothing happened. The minutes
passed in total silence.

 Finally, Sareth concluded: “They must not have seen us go
through – that will be a puzzle for them! A room with no doors or windows, and
yet the prey have gone!”

 Vesarion released a pent-up sigh of relief and sheathed his
sword. “Right,” he said, in the manner of one who has come to a decision. “Time
to see where this goes.”

 But when they turned from the door, they were in for a
surprise.

 Ahead of them lay not a dark tunnel of stone, as they had
supposed, but a passageway made entirely out of ice. The light of the candles
illuminated smooth white walls that glistened and sparkled, casting back the
feeble light and magnifying it. As they began to move along the passage, more
wonders appeared. Fantastic formations made of ice – slender cones arising from
the floor, mirrored by counterparts descending from the ceiling that hung so
low that the travellers had to duck under them. Occasionally, the two met to
form fragile pillars, that transformed from milky-white to delicate shades of
green, blue and aquamarine when touched by the light, as if by alchemy.

 The cold was intense. An irresistible force working its way
through every layer of clothing; through the soles of their boots until they
could no longer feel their toes, through fur-lined gloves until fingers were
numbed.

 Like the castle, the ice passages were possessed by an intense
silence that pressed against their ears, relieved only by the sound of their
footsteps. It was so quiet that the soft sound of their breathing could be
heard, as it misted in the frozen air. Sometimes, the passage was narrow,
forcing them to go in single file, but at others, it widened into impressive
avenues of ice pillars, glittering with cold beauty, refracting the light with
the brilliance of a thousand crystals.

 A debate soon began to rage between Bethro and Iska as to
whether the passage was natural or man-made. Iska insisted that her people were,
once again, demonstrating their skill in constructing tunnels, and Bethro,
equally insistently – and a shade patronisingly – poured scorn on that idea,
declaring that they had only made use of what nature had already provided.

 Much to Iska’s annoyance, the librarian, who had been somewhat
squashed since the incident with the snake door, was rapidly recovering all his
usual pomposity. This was largely due to the fact that he had managed to wring
an apology from Eimer. He had gone about it in his usual fashion. They had not
progressed six paces into the tunnel when he cleared his throat in the
ostentatious manner of someone who wants to be noticed.

 “Ahem,” he coughed.

 Finding that no one paid any heed, he tried again, only
louder. “A-HEM!”

 Vesarion, who guessed what was coming, wisely did not
respond, but Eimer fell right into the trap as easily as a ripe plum falling
from a tree in summer.

 “What?” he demanded irritably.

 “Not a silly daydream then?” warbled Bethro smugly. “Not a
dead end? Not a trap? Perhaps an apology is in order, young man.”

Sareth, highly amused, murmured to her brother: “Let’s see
you get out of that one.”

 The Prince, knowing that he was cornered, conceded the
point with bad grace.

 “All right, Bethro, you win. I’m sorry I doubted you.” Then
brightening, he added: “Now let’s see if you can get an apology out of
Vesarion!”

 A voice echoed back along the tunnel, in tones rendered
sepulchral by the confined space. “He’d better not try.”

 However, Bethro’s sense of self-righteousness was cut short
when they encountered something that supported Iska’s side of the argument – a
flight of steps cut with precision into the ice.

 “I suppose nature did this?” she asked innocently, and got
a scowl in return.

 It proved to be the first of many such flights. About fifty
steep, slippery steps led to a short gallery whose walls were decorated with
rippling flows in the ice, suggesting that it had melted a little and re-frozen
at some stage. The far end of the gallery presented them with yet more steps –
and so it continued. Steps leading to galleries, galleries leading to steps,
for hour after hour.

 When they halted for some food, Vesarion approached Sareth
and said in an undertone: “How many candles have you left?”

 “Three,” she said briefly, already aware of the reason he
asked.

 “From here on, I think we should light only one at a time,
because we have no idea how long we will be in this passage. From our direction
and from the fact that we keep ascending, I am hoping this tunnel goes right
through one of the peaks and emerges on the far side of the mountain, facing
towards Adamant. However, that’s only a guess. I am assuming this passage has
not been used in many years and wherever it went originally, it could now be
blocked or otherwise rendered impassable.”

 When he moved away, Iska, who had been listening, came to
Sareth and said: “I see he still carries the weight of the world on his
shoulders.”

 “I’m afraid so. We are all equally in this together but
somehow he cannot rid himself of the idea that it is his responsibility to keep
us all safe. And yet, I see a change in him recently. The aloofness that I saw
in Addania has gone and I see once more the warmth returning that I saw so
clearly years ago. It’s just nice to see him exhibit
some
emotion – even
if it’s just losing his temper with Bethro.”

 Iska laughed. “I can sympathise with him. Bethro could
provoke a dead man. Besides, a sense of responsibility could hardly be
described as a vice. Yet I begin to understand what you mean. He is not, in
essence, a cold man, but he assumes a veneer that is intended to keep others at
a distance. It’s almost as if he wants the world to know only as much of himself
as he is prepared to share – and that’s not very much. But the veneer grows
thin, Sareth, I see it with every passing day, so do not despair.” For a moment
she was tempted to say more. To draw Sareth’s attention to how solicitous
Vesarion had been towards her when she had been ill, but feeling such comments
were still premature, she contented herself by adding, with a touch of
mischief: “Not that he has any intention of apologising to Bethro, for all of
it.”

 “No. He was perfectly ready to murder Bethro. He’s not the
sort of person to place much reliance on dreams.”

 “There was something about that fortress that encouraged
nightmares,” observed Iska feelingly. “While Bethro was being pursued by fire
sprites, I was dreaming that I was being pursued by my irate half-brother
screaming ‘traitor’ at me.”

 “Mordrian?”

 “Yes. He’s a lot older than me – actually old enough to be
my father because he must be nearly forty now, so I’ve always been a bit in awe
of him. He’s never actually hurt me, although he has a reputation for great
cruelty. It’s just that he is one of those people, that when you look into
their eyes, you just know would go to any lengths to achieve their aims.”

 Sareth, more reserved than her confiding friend, did not
tell her that she had also been affected by the castle’s sinister atmosphere,
for she, too, had endured a nightmare.

 She had dreamed that Vesarion lay in her arms and as she
looked down at him, she saw that he was covered in blood. He was wearing full
armour, with the exception of his helmet, and the sword of Erren-dar lay in his
hand. His eyes were closed, his face deathly pale, and ruby-red blood fell in
great drops from his armour onto the already red-soaked ground.

 Instead, she turned away from Iska, and controlling the
stab of fear that suddenly pierced her, said casually: “It was only a dream,
after all, Iska. Dreams are stupid things.”

 With now only one candle to light the way, the coldness and
darkness closed in around them. Vesarion, in the lead, held the tiny flicker of
light aloft but the extent of its reach was so limited that there were times
when the only way they could proceed was for each person to hold onto the cloak
of the one in front. Gorm, at the tail of the queue, fared worst, as he was in
almost complete darkness. He slithered along the ice, like some sort of
appendage attached to Eimer.

 Finally, after they had journeyed with scarcely a break for
six hours, they left the stairs and galleries behind and emerged into a place
where the tunnels widened into a larger hall, replete with many ice pillars.

 Sareth lit their last candle from the stump that Vesarion
held, and for once, they had enough light to see the glittering hall clearly.
There were so many  pillars, glowing aquamarine in the candlelight, that they
were like a frozen forest. Some were slender to the point of fragility and
others were sturdy, as if of more ancient lineage. They were not in rows but
were scattered randomly, yet they somehow contrived to look not entirely
natural.

“They must have been carved out of the ice,” breathed Sareth
in an awed whisper. “But why create this hall? What is its purpose?”

 It was Gorm who supplied the answer. He had left the others
and had been exploring in his usual fashion, sniffing around like a dog at an
interesting tree, when he suddenly gave a cry and leaped back so violently that
he slipped on the ice and fell with a thud onto his back.

 “
Dead people
!” he cried. “
Kalas thol
!”

 To one side of the pillared hall, half hidden by a fragile
curtain of ice so thin it was almost translucent, was a row of twenty stone
sarcophagi, each one elaborately carved with the snake motif. Closer inspection
revealed that not one of them possessed a lid. They were all filled with ice
that had frozen as clear and hard as a pane of glass, making the occupants
completely visible. In each sarcophagus lay a woman, as perfectly preserved as
the day she died. Most of them were young, some exceptionally beautiful with
long, raven-black tresses. All were dressed in rich, flowing robes and they all
wore on their brows, golden circlets in the shape of two coiled snakes that met
in the centre of their foreheads.

 Iska, staring at them in shock, her face almost as white as
theirs, managed to stammer: “Only those women of the House of Parth who possess
the gift are permitted to wear the snake coronets. But….but who are they? All
the queens of Parth are buried in the old crypt in Adamant. Who are these that
have been hidden away in these ice tunnels, in the very roots of the
mountains?”

 Bethro, who had overcome his initial fright, and was now
examining the carvings on the coffins minutely, supplied the answer.

 “Their names are here, inscribed in the old language,” he
informed them. “This one is Samoria. It reads ‘Here lies Samoria, daughter of Parth,
a traitress who betrayed her kin by adhering to the Book of Lies’.” He moved
along the line to a young girl of great beauty, her dark hair spread over her
shoulders, her long eyelashes resting against her pale cheek. “ ‘Here lies
Evina, child of kings, who used her heritage for treason’. And, look,  here’s
another! ‘Here lies one whose name shall be forgotten, for she defied the Dark
Prince and returned to the old ways’.”