The Gates of Thelgrim

by Robbie MacNiven

  The others were lagging behind. She paused, glancing back irritably. Raythen was standing by looking at Shiver, who was in turn glancing left and right, seemingly scanning the crowded encampment for someone or something.

  “What’s he looking for?” Astarra demanded of Raythen. The dwarf shrugged.

  “He wants to ask someone what happened here.”

  Astarra’s frustration flared. She didn’t have time for this. She was impatient to enter the mountain, to discover what awaited her and attain the power of the runestone they were there to collect. The sight of the refugees and their desperate conditions had only quickened her resolve. Perhaps, with the runestone, she’d be able to convince the warden of these gates to open them once more.

  “I think it’s quite obvious. The Dunwarr shut the gates. They’ve been out here ever since.”

  If Shiver had heard her, he wasn’t listening. He moved off the roadway and in amongst the shelters. People recoiled from his gaunt visage and hurried to get out of his way.

  Astarra did her best to remain composed. She’d told herself over and over that she needed these two – or at least the Dunwarr – if she was going to make it in and out of Thelgrim alive. The elf though, he reeked of darkness and death, and it wasn’t just his grim appearance. She had known foul magics in her time, had come far too close to them on a few occasions. They offered power, but at the cost of control. She’d seen the misery they caused.

  She and Raythen followed in Shiver’s wake, drawing even more murmurs and looks. She was about to snap at the elf to stop and explain himself when she realized he appeared to have found what he was searching for. Or rather, who.

  A woman was standing by a sutler’s cart, a loaf of bread in her hands. She looked tired and afraid, her clothing threadbare and her hair unkempt. A small child was hiding behind her skirts, staring with terror at Shiver as he asked them something.

  Astarra strode towards them, intending to rescue the pair from the deep elf, but Raythen arrested her with a firm grip.

  “He knows them,” he said. “Let him ask his questions.”

  “How could a horror like him know a simple refugee family?” Astarra asked. “They don’t look like they know him.”

  “Well, them knowing him is a different thing entirely,” Raythen said.

  “They shut the gates in front of us,” the woman was saying, a warding hand keeping her child back as the other clutched onto the bread. “I don’t know why. There are rumors, but no one really knows. I don’t know anything about the water either.”

  “What does he want with her?” Astarra hissed. They were beginning to draw a crowd, a fact that appeared to make Raythen even more uncomfortable than it did her. She had no doubt the dwarf was used to doing his business unnoticed, and had presumably intended to smuggle them past the gates without attracting any attention. The realization that things weren’t going according to expectations made her nervous.

  The woman was shaking her head. Shiver reached into his robes and drew out something that glinted in the cold shadows harbored at the valley’s bottom. The woman hesitated, then took the coins. Shiver turned away from her and looked at Astarra and Raythen, as though noticing them for the first time.

  “What in the name of the Turning was that?” Astarra demanded of him as they headed back to the roadway. “Why are you questioning random women and their children?”

  “They weren’t random,” Shiver said tersely. “Their names are Tiabette and Sarra. I’ve seen them before.”

  “How?”

  Shiver glanced at her, as though considering his answer, before responding.

  “A vision.”

  “I thought you said you didn’t have visions?”

  “I didn’t,” Shiver said. He came to a stop in the road, looking past Astarra at the gateway soaring like some monolithic idol above the huddled masses in the valley.

  “I asked her how the gate closed,” he said. “She was here when it happened, with the first refugees. The Dunwarr blocked the gate and then barred it. They didn’t give a reason.”

  “Hardly a revelation,” Astarra said.

  “What did she say about water?” Raythen asked. “At the end.”

  “It was part of what I saw,” Shiver said. “But she couldn’t tell me anything more.”

  “Well, I hope it was worth it,” Astarra said. “Because you’ve got the whole camp taking an interest in us now.”

  “And they know we’ve got money,” Raythen added darkly.

  The crowd watching them was continuing to grow, voices rising amidst the press.

  “We should leave,” Raythen said, low but urgent. “This could turn ugly.”

  “I thought you knew a way inside?” Astarra said.

  “I do, but I’d rather they didn’t. If they see us vanishing into the mountain, what will happen? At best, they’ll follow us, and we’re suddenly responsible for a thousand hungry refugees breaking into Thelgrim.”

  “The way in is not at the gates?” Shiver asked.

  “There’s one route in there,” Raythen said. “A small sally port halfway up the rockface beside the right-hand door, accessible by a path you’d think would be too sheer to climb before you tried it. But if we take that now everyone will see us. Whatever the reason the gates were barred, I doubt their keepers will appreciate us showing these people a different way in. We need to double back and take to the mountainside.”

  “Fine,” Astarra said. “Lead on.”

  “It may be better if Shiver does that,” Raythen pointed out. “At least until we’re clear of the camp.”

  If the elf was insulted, he didn’t show it. Astarra and Raythen followed him as he led them back along the road, back to the great gates. Eyes wide, those who’d been massing around them hurried to clear the way.

  Chapter Four

  They doubled back along the road, until they’d lost sight of the valley and its destitute inhabitants.

  “Will we be able to find the entrance before nightfall?” Astarra asked Raythen. She was unhappy at the time lost, but Shiver had left them exposed. As they’d left the encampment, she’d almost feared being accosted by the more desperate among those abandoned outside the gates.

  “If we hurry,” Raythen said. “Better to get inside and spend the night in the tunnels than out here anyway.”

  “Why is that?” Astarra asked as they halted on the roadside.

  “Mountain superstition,” Raythen said evasively. “And, more importantly, it wouldn’t surprise me if some of the fine folk we’ve just seen follow us and try to lighten our purses while we’re asleep.”

  “Your view of the world is very bleak, Dunwarr,” Shiver said, to Astarra’s surprise.

  “Just trying to stay alive,” Raythen said, a little bitterly. “Which begs the question, why am I here in the first place? Come on.”

  He led them off the road and up the mountainside. It was less sheer than the valley had been, though Astarra still found herself struggling after a hundred or so paces. The slope was mostly rugged scree, treacherous underfoot. She couldn’t see any obvious route that Raythen was taking as he forged ahead. Frustratingly, neither of her companions showed any sign of difficulty as they took the slope.

  She forged on, using her staff to assist the climb. By the time Raythen came to a halt her heart was beating hard and her thighs were burning. She reached up to wipe sweat from her brow, realizing as she did so that the ground they were standing on was more level than it had been.

  Raythen had found a track. From the road it was indiscernible amongst the crags and rocks, but up on the mountainside itself it was visible, a faint thread that wound its way along the slope.

  She looked back the way they had come, seeing the road stretching out, far below now. The valley was visible, hazed by distance, the gates a far-off gleam. The sun was going down, setting the tops
of the vast mountains alight.

  It was a spectacular view, unlike any Astarra had ever seen before. A part of her wished she could linger and take it in, watch as the vivid brilliance drained little-by-little from the purple and gray slopes and flickered from existence behind the snowy peaks. But Raythen was already moving off along the pathway, seemingly unconcerned with the natural splendor of his home.

  She chastised herself. She hadn’t come all this way to stand and stare. The runeshard called to her, another step on the path she’d chosen for her life. Power would not be won by idleness. She looked briefly at Shiver, who was also gazing out at the sunset, then walked past him after the dwarf.

  The shadows lengthened, creeping over the moorland and the hills below, reaching slowly, steadily up the mountainside, stretching out to grasp at the trio struggling along its flank.

  The path took them higher. Astarra pushed through her tiredness, determined not to falter in front of the others.

  The last of the sun was fading when Raythen brought them to a sudden stop. The slope around them had changed – the path had taken them above the valley where the gates were set. Now a sheer drop fell away to their left, down towards the road and the encampment, while to their right the cliff face continued to rise, stern and uncompromising. The flat ground between them was only wide enough for single file, a fact that didn’t seem to trouble either the dwarf or the elf. Astarra dared snatch a glance over the edge, and immediately regretted it. The encampment was lost in the darkness that had bled up out of the valley below, the only sign of life the pinprick illumination of cooking fires.

  “This is it,” Raythen said. He didn’t even seem to be out of breath. Silently, Astarra cursed the extent of dwarven stamina.

  “The rock marks it,” Shiver said, looking even more gaunt and sinister in the twilight. Astarra wondered what he meant, then noticed the short pillar of stone rising from the cliff to their left. It was a little, craggy spur, incongruous enough, but it was clearly what Raythen had been looking for. The Dunwarr was already busy inspecting the face of the cliff to their right, running his fingers over the unyielding surface and muttering something under his breath.

  Astarra resisted the urge to ask just what the dwarf was looking for. She waited. With the sun gone the wind had turned chill, knifing through the valley and tugging at her pelt. She focused on Raythen, rather than the drop to her back, wondering if he’d be able to find what he was looking for once true darkness had fallen.

  “Is that what you’re seeking?” Shiver asked. He’d moved a little further along the track and was now indicating a part of the rising cliff that looked just as unremarkable as the rest of it. Raythen said something in his native tongue. Astarra doubted it was complimentary.

  “Light’s playing tricks,” he added, shifting to Shiver’s side. Astarra joined them, and realized immediately what they had found.

  There was a crack in the rock face, running up in front of them. It could have been naturally made, were it not for the perfection of its placement. Due to the sharpness of the angle someone passing along the track, especially in the direction of the gates, would likely have walked right past it without noticing. Even knowing what he was looking for, Raythen hadn’t been able to immediately spot it – it had taken Shiver’s razor senses to locate it.

  The crack led into the mountain.

  Astarra realized she must have been staring, because Shiver spoke to her, his tone explanatory.

  “Fashioning the rock like this is a common Dunwarr attribute,” he said. “They are able to hide passages in plain sight, if the nature of the face allows it. Great expertise in the bending and crafting of stone is required though.”

  Astarra said nothing. A part of her wanted to snap petulantly back at the elf, as she had done a number of times since they’d been on the road together, but even in her tired state she realized that would be churlish. Instead, she looked to Raythen, who was already moving into the crevasse.

  The darkness within seemed absolute. Dunwarr could see well enough underground, and a deep elf like Shiver even more so, but she had no intention of delving into the mountainside without some form of illumination. As Shiver began following Raythen she reached to the head of her staff and unfastened the blue tanzanite orb. Beneath it, wedged into the staff’s reactive carved tusker bone, was the Deeprune, one of the runebound shards she had mastered. The power of the ocean depths had served its purpose, for now. She removed it carefully and secreted it in her waist pouch, before drawing out a different shard.

  Unlike the Deeprune, which seemed to have been worn smooth by the crushing weight of the seas, this stone was jagged and scorched black, like a splinter of volcanic rock. Its name was the Ignis Shard, and it was hot to the touch.

  Astarra lodged it into the bone tip of her staff, then retrieved the volcanic rock that twinned with it from her pouch, fixing it into place on top. She could already feel the staff heating up in her grip, the elemental fury of the Ignis’s hot, broiling core drawn by the stone.

  “Kellos lathara hem,” she murmured, raising the staff and letting the last of the anger and frustration she’d felt in recent days flare through it. The Ignis Shard ignited, an orange flame sparking and flaring into life around the volcanic rock, dancing like a firefly in the twilight.

  She saw Shiver look back, his pale face picked out by the sudden illumination. The fire burned in his black eyes, his expression as stoic and unreadable as ever.

  Astarra advanced into the crevasse. At first, she was forced to go partly side-on, the cold, hard rock seeming to close in on her like vast and unyielding jaws. After a while though the space started to open out, eventually becoming wide enough to walk two abreast.

  “What was this used for?” she asked, her voice echoing weirdly up the tunnel. “Smuggling?”

  The flickering light of her staff picked out the stonework around them – it wasn’t rough like the cliff they’d left behind, but seemed to have been worn smooth in places, as though something had passed through the rock that had left it leveled off.

  “It’s part of the defenses,” Raythen called back. “But yes, someone who might have fancied getting in and out of Thelgrim unseen could have used it in the past. If they didn’t mind the risk.”

  “Risk?” Astarra asked, not sure she wanted to know. Raythen didn’t reply.

  The tunnel grew larger and more regular, though the strange smoothness remained. Eventually they came to an intersection, three tunnels branching off, two uphill to the left and one, narrower, descending away to the right.

  “We’ll stop here for now,” Raythen said, indicating the space before the junction. “I don’t fancy treading the Hearth Road without getting some rest. Especially as we’ve no idea what we’ll find when we reach it.”

  “No idea?” Shiver queried, his voice a soft, dire rattle that seemed to echo down the branching tunnels.

  “Well, unless you know why the gates have been sealed?” Raythen said, looking back at him as he hefted his pack off his back and onto the tunnel floor. “Perhaps everyone’s been slaughtered by your kin? There are plenty of deep elves in these parts, and few with a good word to say about the city of the Dunwarr.”

  “I have no connection with any,” Shiver said. “They are not my kin, or if they were, they have not been for many centuries.”

  “You’re not going to skulk away down a tunnel to sleep?” Astarra asked the elf as he sat with his back to the wall, wondering whether he was telling them the truth about the local clans. He looked at her with his soulless eyes, gleaming in the sorcerous firelight.

  “I do not intend to sleep.”

  “That doesn’t make me feel any better,” Astarra said, sitting down against the wall opposite him and drawing her pelt close. She was cold and tired, and in no mood to endure the elf sorcerer’s disconcerting habits.

  “It does me,” Raythen said, settling down
with his head propped against his pack. “Means neither of us have to keep watch.”

  “How far to the Hearth Road?” Astarra asked him, trying not to think about Shiver watching over them as they slept. “And how long does it take to reach Thelgrim?”

  “From here, a little over a day’s travel,” Raythen said, noncommittally. “It’s a subterranean passage that will take us straight from the gates to the city itself. We’re on schedule.”

  “Assuming we’re not delayed when we reach our destination,” Astarra pointed out. “You said before you don’t know anything about this League of Invention.”

  “They’re one of the minor associations seeking guild status,” Raythen said. “There are dozens of them in the city. I never had any dealings with them.”

  “Well, that’s about to change,” Astarra said. She glanced at Shiver. The elf was looking away down the tunnel they’d come through, unblinking and silent. She watched him for a while longer before grasping her staff and murmuring a thanks to Kellos.

  The light of the Ignis Shard faded and died, leaving them in darkness.

  •••

  Shiver waited until the breathing of the others had become slow and regular. He stood in the darkness for a while, utterly still and silent, watching them both. Then, when he was certain they were asleep, he padded along the tunnel to the right.

  As he walked, he placed his hand on the rock, letting his fingertips glide along the worn stone. He could feel immense power here, primal and rooted deep within the mountain. It was the threat Raythen had mentioned, but it was far off now, settled and still.

  He walked further. It felt strange to be underground once more. He could only assume that he had been born beneath the earth, had grown up in the tunnels and passages that many deep elves called home. He had few memories of his childhood – like everything before his freedom, it was opaque, hidden from him no matter how hard he sought it.

  He had hoped that journeying into the mountain would help recover some of what he had lost, but he didn’t dare seek it directly, not with the other two still so close. Putting together the pieces of the past was like reassembling a mirror that had been shattered into a thousand pieces. Each shard was razor-edged. Placing them back together could be dangerous.