The Gates of Thelgrim

by Robbie MacNiven

  He recalled the woman he’d met in the valley, the one he’d seen after opening the lock. Tiabette. Hungry, cold, desperate, like the hundreds – likely soon to be thousands – abandoned before the gates of Thelgrim. He had wanted to tell her to leave, to escape the danger hanging over the mountains like a shroud, but what good would such words have done? To have come all this way, she couldn’t turn back again, alone but for her child, with little food and money and the long road south beset by bandits. It would have doomed her, just as it would have any of those sheltering before the gates.

  It wasn’t her place to go back. It was Shiver’s place to go on.

  As he walked, he wondered about the other elves who inhabited these spaces beneath the mountains. He had told the others that he had no ties to the local clans. He hoped that was true. It was difficult to be wholly certain, given that his past was a patchwork of memories, incomplete and fractured. He knew little – or could remember little – of the deep elves of the Dunwarrs, certainly regarding how they related to his own kin further south. All deep elf clans made their homes beneath the mountains and tended to be nomadic in nature. Beyond those aspects though, and a shared, universal hatred of the Ynfernael, there were few ties of commonality that bound them. Shiver had little idea what to expect if they happened across one of the local daggerbands. He disliked such uncertainty, though he considered the odds of encountering them low. Deep elves and dwarfs rarely found common ground, and these tunnels were very much the territory of Thelgrim’s Dunwarr guilds. The rock was redolent with their presence, fashioned by their hands.

  He stopped abruptly, his soft footsteps faltering in the dark. Memories assailed him, of people like Tiabette, lost and abandoned and crying out for help. He offered them death instead. Their screams seemed to echo through the tunnel, rising up to a piercing, soul-chilling cacophony.

  Not now, he thought desperately. He sought one of the mantras he had long ago learned, trying to focus his mind on the simple purity of repetition. He faced one of the tunnel walls, arms outstretched and hands planted against the smooth stone, his head bowed.

  Atali nametha ren. Nameth hatala. Atali nametha ren. Nameth hatala.

  Slowly the screams faded, echoing away into the oblivion where they belonged.

  He straightened up, and realized he was shaking. That had not been a new memory – he could only gain those from the locks, or entering a deep, meditative state in a place of great significance to the Empyrean. No, the screams, the pleading, the death, those had all been with him for a long time, unlocked years ago. In a sense they had never left him.

  He stood still for a while, letting the shivers subside, drinking in the total silence, the stillness of the mountain that surrounded him and wondering if, ever so distantly, ever so faintly, he could still hear a scream, echoing away through the tunnel.

  He turned and rejoined the others.

  •••

  Raythen descended carefully along the downward-sloping tunnel, side-on, his boots scuffing on the rock underfoot. He’d had a rough night, unalleviated by stale bread and a strip of overly salted pork for breakfast.

  Food was running low. He’d been planning on buying, or stealing, more from the encampment in the valley, but of course Astarra and Shiver had ruined that plan. He wondered, in particular, how the sorceress was faring. Both Raythen and Shiver were well-suited for the underground, in their own ways. Darkness did little to impede their sight, and Raythen would easily find sleep stretched out on cold, hard bedrock. They needed less sustenance than the human, and possessed a keen, instinctive sense of direction. Astarra possessed none of those advantages. Raythen found himself wondering whether she’d turn back, and wondering whether he should encourage her to do so. Her determination – at times bordering on a very Dunwarr-like stubbornness – had impressed him so far, and he had no doubt the runes at her command were formidable. He just wasn’t sure he wanted to be around when she was goaded into fully using them.

  He’d led them through the mountain, doing what any good Dunwarr would do and not stopping to think. He kept moving, trusting that deep-seated intuition, hoping it would lead him on the right path.

  And it had. He could see light ahead now, not the pale gleam of daylight but the flickering, fiery glow of torches, not dissimilar to the light cast by Astarra’s sorcerous staff. He’d been looking out for the sign of flames since stepping into the crevasse on the mountainside, silently praying to Fortuna that, after so long above ground, his Dunwarr sense of subterranean direction hadn’t deserted him.

  The narrow, sloping passage he was taking came to an end. Ahead lay another tunnel, running left to right. It was unlike any of those they’d traversed so far – its walls were not untrammeled rock, but had been planed smooth and carved with thousands upon thousands of runic inscriptions, tiny, intricate lettering that ran from the cobbled floor all the way to the arching roof. The entire space was wide enough to have marched fifteen Dunwarr warriors shoulder to shoulder down its center, and tall enough to have fitted the twisting spire of a shrine of Kellos within it without scraping the ceiling above.

  “Another tunnel,” Astarra said from behind Raythen, looking past him. “I thought you were taking us to the city, Dunwarr.”

  “Thelgrim is not a city as you know it,” Raythen said, stepping into the wide passage, gazing from the rune-carved walls up to the long, arched roof. “It is buried deep within the mountain’s core, a day’s journey beyond the entrance commonly considered its gates.”

  “So, this is the route through the mountain?” Astarra asked as she followed him out, looking left then right, taking in the grandeur of the buried passage without verbally acknowledging it to Raythen.

  “This is the Hearth Road,” he affirmed as Shiver joined them, his eyes on the dwarf rather than the glory of their surroundings. “And only one thing is missing. People.”

  The great, subterranean roadway was deserted. Raythen had never known it to be like that before. It was the arterial route linking Thelgrim with the outside world. Normally it would have been busy with trader’s wagons, supply caravans, armed patrols and heavily-guarded convoys carrying precious metals and rare artifacts between the city and the world beyond the Dunwarrs. Right now, however, absolutely nothing stirred for as far along the tunnel as Raythen could see, in either direction. The only movement was the flickering of the great, slow-burning torches that sat in braziers every few dozen yards, the only sound the breathing of Raythen and his companions. It was disconcerting.

  “The gates are closed,” Astarra pointed out. “Why would anyone be using this road anymore?”

  “They are more than just gates,” Raythen said, trying not to lose his patience with the human. She was out of her depth here, in every sense, and it was beginning to show.

  “The gates are an outpost,” he continued. “There are markets, stores, a barracks. Many traders from across Terrinoth don’t even travel down the Hearth Road to Thelgrim proper. They do their business there, then depart. It’s more convenient for them. Some even think the gates are Thelgrim. But even if they were shut to the outside, those who inhabit them would still come and go to the city along this route.”

  “Then perhaps the gates haven’t just been sealed,” Astarra surmised. “Perhaps they’ve been abandoned.”

  “I’ve never heard of that happening,” Raythen said, dismissing the possibility as further evidence that Astarra had no knowledge or understanding as far as the Dunwarrs were concerned. “What sort of disaster could have prompted that?”

  “There are many,” Shiver said. Raythen looked at him sharply. The deep elf had been even more silent than usual since they’d penetrated the mountains. Raythen had been wondering just how much of it was familiar to him. He’d claimed not to be from the Dunwarrs, but as a deep elf, places like these were hardly unusual. He certainly didn’t seem as out-of-place as Astarra.

  “You speak as thou
gh you know what’s happened here,” he said to him. “That makes me uneasy, and I don’t like feeling uneasy. Care to enlighten us?”

  “There are echoes,” Shiver said. “The pain of abandonment. We will find nothing of use at the gates.”

  “Cryptic nonsense,” Astarra said.

  “We can’t know anything for sure until we reach the city,” Raythen said, seeking out a course of action before another argument could flare. “I’ve also had more than a few… encounters with Captain Bradha, who commands at the gate. On the off chance that she’s still there, I’d rather we go in the opposite direction.”

  “Our goal is in Thelgrim,” Astarra said. “So, to Thelgrim we will go.”

  Chapter Five

  They set off along the Hearth Road, following it as it delved its way deeper into the mountain.

  Astarra had never seen anything quite like it. The vast, drafty halls and the towering cloisters of Greyhaven had possessed an austere majesty, but no scriptorium or grand library could prepare her for this place. Had it been built above ground, the precision and care applied to every inch of the mile after mile of stonework would have been incredible. The fact that it had all been burrowed from the solid, unyielding bedrock of the Dunwarrs was almost beyond belief.

  “What do the walls say?” she asked Raythen as they walked, noting how, despite speaking aloud, there was no echo, no phantom repetition caused by the great subterranean passageway.

  “The usual nonsense,” Raythen said. “A history of the mountains, of the city, traced all the way back to the old myths. A litany of kings and guild-masters. The sorts who write the histories. Or order them to be written, anyway. Wouldn’t want to be the poor mason-apprentice who had to do all the chiseling.”

  He laughed, not sparing the walls a second glance. Astarra wondered how he could be dismissive of such a wondrous place. She supposed that familiarity bred contempt. She’d seen awe and amazement in the expressions of young scholars setting eyes on Greyhaven’s pillars for the first time, yet it was a place she herself had come to hate. She rarely thought of home either, of the apple orchards and the small, thatch-covered farmstead, of the fields of swaying corn that surrounded it, and the rutted woodland track that led to the marketplace of the nearest market-town, always bustling and often, in her memories, dappled in summer sunshine.

  It felt like a different world from the fire-lit, stony stillness that now surrounded her. Yet with each step, Astarra felt her determination grow. If she was to become a true runemaster, worthy of the legacy of even Timmoran the Great, she knew she would have to travel from one end of Terrinoth to the other, and possibly beyond. Here beneath the Dunwarrs, on the edge of all she knew, the progress she was making was more immediate, more real than it had felt in months.

  That which she sought was almost within her reach.

  She realized that the torches ahead had gone out. A stretch of perhaps a hundred yards had fallen into darkness, a fact that didn’t seem to concern the other two.

  “The braziers have to be restocked from time to time,” Raythen said, as though sensing her hesitation. “Part of the Masons’ Guild is almost wholly dedicated to keeping the Hearth Road alight. Seems like they’re slacking.”

  Astarra said nothing. The darkness of the main tunnel itself didn’t overly concern her – she could see the next lit braziers ahead, like beacons in the cloying shadows that lay between them. More worrying were the side-tunnels that lay within the unlit section.

  There were secondary routes connected to the Hearth Road all along its progress. Some were just bare rock tunnels, like the one Raythen had led them down, but others were carved archways that seemed to lead into smaller subsidiaries of the Hearth Road. Raythen had explained that some were nothing more than storage cupboards and way stations along the road, but others did connect to the warren of tunnels and passages that seemed to dig and twist their way all through the mountain.

  “Some are uncharted,” Raythen claimed, apparently without concern. “No one knows how far or deep all of them run, except perhaps a few long-beards in the Miner’s Guild, and even they’re probably just lying to get the younglings to buy them more ale.”

  Astarra had watched each passage entrance carefully as they went by. The darkness of many seemed absolute, and she couldn’t shake the sense that there were eyes gazing back at her, unseen from beyond the archways. A sense of foreboding had started to creep over her, making her skin prickle and her heart beat faster. The confidence she had felt when first taking in the sight of the Hearth Road was in danger of guttering out.

  She ignited her staff with a word and a thought, waking up the reactive material. The light it gave off seemed to do little to ward away the shadows they had stepped in amongst.

  There was a change that only dawned on Astarra as she walked further – the soft sound of footsteps made by the trio had grown quieter. One of them had stopped.

  She turned sharply. Shiver was standing a dozen paces back, in amongst the shadows. He was facing the blackness of one of the passageways, remaining perfectly still.

  Raythen came to a halt beside Astarra and looked back at the elf too. She noticed the Dunwarr’s hand had disappeared inside his heavy cloak, as it always did when the dwarf seemed uncertain. He was grasping one of his weapons, she was sure.

  “Shiver,” he called out softly. The elf didn’t respond.

  “Perhaps he sees something,” Astarra said. “Or maybe he’s having another of his trances.”

  The memory of the one the elf had suffered on the road had stayed with her. It was the scream, more than anything. The noise had been horrific, chilling. It was the sound of a soul that was lost and damned, of that she was sure.

  Raythen seemed frozen, unable to decide what to do. Astarra called out sharply, finally drawing the hint of an echo from the precisely carved tunnel.

  “Shiver!”

  The elf looked at them both, so sharply that Astarra almost jumped. The black eyes, once more reflecting the firelight of the staff, held hers. Slowly, he raised one long, pale finger to his lips.

  That was when Astarra heard it. The faintest of clicks.

  “Move,” she snarled, shoving Raythen and throwing herself in the opposite direction. A projectile slashed between them from the darkness of another of the conjoining passages, a dart that clattered off the far wall of the tunnel.

  “Talatha ignis,” she shouted, grasping her staff in both hands. The flames that coiled about its head surged, sweeping down its length and setting it wholly ablaze.

  The light illuminated their attackers just as they leapt from the surrounding tunnels. They were tall, pale and painfully slender, clad in close-fitting leathers and dulled metals. Their raven hair was bound up in topknots, and their eyes were mostly dark.

  Deep elves. Astarra didn’t have time to feel outrage at the treachery that had befallen them. She swung her staff at the first attacker to lunge at her, a shrieking assailant wielding a pair of long daggers that gleamed in the firelight. The elf ducked beneath the blow with horrifying agility, and before Astarra could recover the twin daggers were scissoring at her exposed throat.

  “Ignatus,” she cried out, throwing herself back in a desperate effort to avoid having her neck laid open to the bone. The fire that had engulfed her staff surged, flaring up with conscious anger and catching the elf as he moved in for the kill.

  The elf stumbled as the flames caught his arm and back, his battle-scream becoming a howl of agony as the heat seared his flesh and ignited his clothing. Astarra kicked out at him, afraid a reflexive slash from one of the blades would still catch her. He staggered and flailed at the flames, the twin knives clattering as they fell to the roadway.

  Something slammed into her side, driving her over. Her staff slipped from her grasp, the fires dying the second they broke contact. She sprawled, trying to right herself, and realized Raythen and a deep elf we
re all-but on top of her, locked in a death-grapple. The Dunwarr had one strong hand clamped around the elf’s slender neck, while the elf was trying to dig a dagger through Raythen’s cloak and into his flank.

  Astarra twisted, her legs pinned by the pair, trying to reach her staff. Another dart cracked off the roadway right in front of her, almost pinning her wrist to it. She heard Raythen hiss with pain, a counterpoint to the ugly choking sounds the elf was making.

  It felt as though her arm was going to burst from its socket. Anger gripped her, a terrible fury that burned as brightly as the Ignis Shard. She wasn’t going to die here, in the darkness beneath the mountain, led blindly to her fate by some treacherous, fell sorcerer. She hadn’t tamed three separate runeshards and sought others from the Traitor’s Wastes to the Ru Steppes just to have her throat slit in the shadows.

  A single finger touched the side of the staff. The reaction was instantaneous. The fire reignited with a roar, blazing brightly from end to end.

  “Ignis meldaris,” Astarra roared, binding the flames into a ball of burning fury and dragging it from the fused shard of volcanic rock tipping the staff. She hurled it at the elf straddling Raythen, the discharge of magical energies strong enough to tear him from the Dunwarr’s grasp and fling him hard against the far wall. The impact must have forced the air from his lungs because he didn’t scream as the fires engulfed him.

  Raythen got to his feet, panting and clutching his side. Astarra scrambled across the road and snatched up her staff again. Her hands remained unburned, the fire unable to harm its summoner as she swung it up and turned to meet the next attack.

  Except, there wasn’t one. The Hearth Road was empty once more, but for Shiver. He was still standing across from one of the side tunnels, though now there was a body sprawled in front of him. It was a fellow deep elf, and it looked as though it had just been hauled from the depths of a mountain glacier. It lay on its back, hands raised, fingers bent and frozen, entirely covered by a thick layer of bristling white frost.