The Gates of Thelgrim

by Robbie MacNiven

  At some point he heard the scuffing of boots descending the stairs towards the cell door. There was a rattle of keys. Raythen made sure he was positioned in the correct corner of the cell, but didn’t look up. He expected it was his jailer, returning to take back his slop bowl.

  It wasn’t.

  The hesitation at the door made Raythen look up. His father gazed back at him coldly. He was dressed in a leather doublet with gold trim, with his beard as heavily decorated as ever, though he’d dispensed with the circlet that marked him as the reigning King in the Deeps. From what he recalled from his childhood, Raythen knew that didn’t bode well.

  Ragnarson looked down at the battered, dirty bowl sitting on the floor in front of him. Then, to Raythen’s surprise, he bent forward, picked it up, and handed it out to the jailer who had opened the door.

  “Wait outside,” he commanded. The Dunwarr bowed and swung the door shut behind the king.

  “Hello, Father,” Raythen said. He remained sitting. Ragnarson didn’t approach, and he found himself praying silently to Fortuna that he didn’t glance to the corner on his left and spot the small pile of congealed slop Raythen had collected.

  “I should not be here,” Ragnarson said. “I was advised against speaking to you before the trial.”

  “By those devious little twins?” Raythen asked. They had been constant companions to his father for as long as he could recall, always scheming, always watching, ready to report the slightest misdeed. He despised them more than any other Dunwarr he had ever met. “They were bad enough when I was growing up. Is there any part of the deeps they don’t now control?”

  “They serve me as they have served the last two kings of the Dunwarrs,” Ragnarson said sternly. “I will not let your wily words detract from them.”

  “And yet you speak to me without their knowledge?” Raythen asked.

  “I want the truth,” Ragnarson said. “And I can’t be certain that a formal trial will actually get to that.”

  “Is that what I’m to be subjected to?” Raythen said. “The ignominy of a ‘formal trial.’ The Guild Council will love that. A chance to mob the Dunwol Kenn Karnin and jeer you and your son.”

  “What else did you expect when you came here?” Ragnarson demanded. “Did you think I could shield you? That I would?”

  “Well, it would certainly be a break from the norm if you tried,” Raythen said.

  He watched his father as he spoke, saw the anger in his eyes, flashing like sunlight from a newly drawn blade. He wanted to strike him. He could feel it. A part of him wanted to cringe, to flinch, but he didn’t. He never had, even when his father had drawn blood with his blows.

  “Just tell me the truth,” the king said. “Did you take the Hydra Shard? Thelgrim’s very own Star of Timmoran?”

  “No,” Raythen said. “But if I could have, I would. Whoever slipped it from the Hall of the Ancestors without being noticed has my deepest respect.”

  Ragnarson was silent. Raythen recognized the struggle to keep his temper in check. He’d known that same struggle many times.

  The king turned abruptly and walked to the cell door, banging on it with one, scarred fist. Only when it creaked open did he look back at Raythen and speak.

  “You know the punishment if the guilds find you guilty?”

  Raythen returned his gaze, but said nothing.

  Ragnarson turned and left.

  •••

  Bradha came for him later that day.

  “Get up,” the fully armed and armored Dunwarr captain ordered.

  “Why, are we going somewhere nice?” Raythen asked, not moving.

  “Do you want me to bloody your nose again, thief?” Bradha demanded.

  “I’d rather not have any more features rearranged by the Shield’s shield,” Raythen admitted, pulling himself by his chains up onto his feet. His nose still ached dully from the blow that had incapacitated him in the Cragwarren.

  Bradha stood aside for one of the guards, who advanced and unshackled Raythen from the wall. Hands still chained together, he was lead from the cell and out into the passageways and stairwells of the Dunwol Kenn Karnin.

  He heard the Guild Council long before he saw it. Their voices rang through the halls and bastion chambers of Thelgrim’s greatest fastness, at times as raucous as a king’s ascension feast, at others grumbling and grating, like the slow sliding of rocks on a mountainside. They had been roused from their eternal squabbling in the Guild Hall and brought into the king’s chamber, into the Dunwol Kenn Karnin, a fastness usually denied to them.

  Their presence made Raythen afraid, though he did his best not to let it show to Bradha or the other guards who tramped on either side of him. He had been here before. He had known the ruthless examination of the Guild Masters, demanding he account for a crime he hadn’t committed. He had trod this very route, decades before, when shame and ire had been new, unpleasant feelings. He still remembered the uproar when he had stepped out into the chamber. It had made his heart quail.

  The thunder of outrage and disapproval was no less intense than he remembered it. He came in under the archway at the head of the hall and began to descend the long flight of stairs leading to its bottom. The throne room was shaped like an amphitheater, its sides composed of tiered stone seats. They were full, hundreds of Dunwarr rising to their feet as they caught sight of Raythen. Their jeering reverberated from the great vault of the buried chamber.

  The throne itself sat upon a plinth of Dunwarr bedrock at the far end of the amphitheater’s bowl. It was the ancient Throne of Tanngnoster, a mighty block of intricately carved granite, its flanks fashioned like great dragons that lay crushed beneath the weight of a Dunwarr keystone. King Ragnarson was seated upon it, as stony-faced and graven as the rock he rested above. Two of the three captains of the Warrior’s Guild, Svensson and Svensdottir, stood resplendent in silver and gold ceremonial armor on either side of the pedestal.

  Raythen was led by Bradha down into the bowl. He glared straight ahead, ignoring the barked insults and coarse laughter of the guild members crammed in on either side. They were all present, bedecked in the colors and bearing upon their chests the crests of the ten bodies that underpinned Dunwarr society. They jostled for the best tiers of the amphitheater, cursing and arguing amongst themselves, trading barbs and banter in equal measure.

  It was rare for them all to be invited into the inner sanctum of the throne room. Normally their endless debates were confined to the Guild Hall, but a formal council allowed them to invade the Dunwol Kenn Karnin and remind the king, indirectly or not, that he ruled only by their consent. The thought that this was as difficult and shameful for his father as it was for him, restored a fraction of Raythen’s spirit.

  A series of stone slabs had been arrayed beneath the crag the throne was set upon. They were backed by a number of high-backed chairs, most of which were occupied by a collection of austere white-beards. Raythen spotted Korri and Zorri among the judges, looking down on him haughtily from their chairs. He forced himself to smile at them.

  He was led to the slab facing directly towards the throne. There were no seats there, though one Dunwarr was already standing by it. It was Mavarin, his wrists shackled to the slab’s flank. He glanced at Raythen, as he was brought up alongside him, and smiled.

  “You got a much b- bigger cheer than when they brought me in,” he said over the tumult.

  “Lucky me,” Raythen said dryly. He was already scanning the faces of the Dunwarr seated before the throne, trying to see if he remembered any, looking for anything at all that he could use to his advantage. There was fat old Galthi, the ruddy master of the Brewer’s Guild, who had once caught Raythen when he’d been a child, siphoning from the great casks in the basement of the guild’s headquarters. Considering the near-religious significance of ale to the Brewers, he’d been let off comparatively lightly that time. Then th
ere was Krellen, the crag-faced master of the Miners’ Guild. He embodied the ancient rivalry between the miners and the smiths, only enhanced by the fact that Ragnarson, before his election as king, had been the master of the Blacksmiths’ Guild. Raythen’s indiscretions had given Krellen a means to undermine the king’s authority plenty of times before. Judging by the small, cold smile the old miner gave him, it seemed Raythen had done so again.

  One of the guards who’d led him to the plinth shackled the chains binding his wrists to a thick iron ring in the stone’s flank, securing him alongside Mavarin. Bradha offered a short bow towards the throne.

  Ragnarson didn’t wait any longer. He picked up a hammer that had been resting on the arm of his throne and struck a trio of ringing blows from a small anvil that sat alongside the great granite block.

  “Silence!” Captain Svensdottir roared as the jarring reports of the hammer strikes resounded through the throne room. The volume of the assembled council dipped immediately, though it continued to rumble and roll, never properly quelled.

  “Council Master Fellin, begin the proceedings,” Ragnarson said, looking at the assembled Guild Masters seated before him. A scribe, occupying his own small block off to one side of the throne dais, began to scribble away at a long roll of parchment.

  Master Fellin, the leader of the Artificers’ Guild, rose and cleared his throat. There was a brief smattering of jeers from his rivals in the Smiths’ Guild, swiftly quelled by the angry hissing of the dwarfs surrounding them.

  “The Guild Council has hereby been summoned to meet on this, the Ninth Day past Runefire, in the eighty-second year of the Broken Dragon,” Fellin said, the aged Dunwarr using a small optic lens to peer at the scroll laid out in front of him. “It has been called upon to sit in judgement before King Ragnarson Smithmaster, and act in its sworn capacity as questioners and as jury in the trial of Kayl Mavarin and Raythen Ragnarson. Do the chosen Guild Masters accept this duty, and swear to perform it to the best of their ability, before all the gods and ancestors and to the glory of the ancient city of Thelgrim?”

  “Aye,” the rest of the jury intoned loudly.

  “And you, King Ragnarson Smithmaster,” Fellin said, half-turning to address the throne while keeping his eyes on the parchment. “Do you recognize the authority of the assembled Guild Masters to act as questioners and jury, and to abide by and enforce their final, collective judgement over the assembled prisoners?”

  “I do,” Ragnarson said, without hesitation.

  “Then I declare that the trial of Kayl Mavarin and Raythen Ragnarson has hereby begun.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  According to Shiver, the Aethyn leader’s name was Maelwich. Astarra had listened to them conduct a terse conversation in elvish, before he had turned to her and done his best to convince her not to immolate them all.

  She had grudgingly agreed not to. This was the trust Shiver had spoken of, laid bare. He had yet to deceive her, and Astarra had resolved to continue to give the elf his shot at repentance. Besides, now that the Aethyn had actually cornered them, he represented her best chance of parting company with them alive.

  Exactly who Maelwich was remained unclear, but she certainly seemed to know Shiver. When the deep elves had cut off the bottom of the slope shaft, Astarra had feared the worst. The past hour hadn’t provided a great deal in the way of reassurance.

  The tunnels, passages and cuttings they were being led through had long become an indistinguishable warren, yet at some point she became aware that the spaces they were moving in no longer appeared to be dwarven in origin. When the miners of Thelgrim delved deeper into the mountain they did so using broad, straight lines. Even the most basic chutes appeared to have been cut inch-perfect through the bedrock, and some tunnels seemed more like feast halls than mining passages, their walls high and ceilings broad, lit by slow-burning oil candles and supported by row upon row upon row of timber and iron struts.

  All the regularity, all the relentless, engineered precision, appeared to have been left behind now. Astarra’s runefire revealed slender passages that wormed their way irregularly through the rock, as though tunneled by some great depths-dwelling creature. Distressingly, she could see no evidence of the supports or struts that were the foundation of many of the dwarven tunnels. Most of the time she couldn’t even tell if the narrow crevices she was stepping through were the work of the elves, or simply natural fissures in the rock that they were exploiting. Whereas the dwarves of Thelgrim seemed to plough their way, firmly and unwaveringly, through the mountain’s roots, the deep elves slipped over, under and around them, like rainwater sinking through soil.

  They had paused momentarily in a small cavern with water trickling down one slick wall. Despite her caution, relief had filled Astarra, and she’d gorged herself at the bottom of the waterfall before refilling the water skin in her pouch. The elves had likewise taken turns drinking, albeit in a far more restrained manner, each one murmuring something in their strange, flowing tongue before sipping upon the blessing of the rocks. Shiver alone hadn’t partaken. When Astarra had quietly asked him why, he’d simply said it was not his place.

  Shortly afterwards, one of the elves approached her. Astarra met his black eyes unflinchingly. The voice of the Aethyn leader barked something in a tongue she didn’t understand and, after staring her down for a moment more, the Aethyn made a gesture – two fingers brushed once, sideways, across his mouth – and withdrew.

  She forced herself to let the flames of the Ignis gutter back to a dull glow. That was the second time one of the party that had intercepted them had approached her. She assumed they intended to take her staff. Just why Maelwich was stopping them she wasn’t sure, unless it was simply the desire to avoid immolation. She had already instructed Shiver to tell them that she would die before giving up her runestones. Whether he had passed that resolve on in exactly the same words she had used wasn’t obvious.

  Maelwich issued another series of commands and the daggerband set off once more, Astarra and Shiver securely in their midst. Astarra had had few dealings with elves of any kind down the years, but even by their standards the Aethyn seemed strange. They spoke little – she’d barely heard a word uttered by any other than Maelwich, so much so that she found herself wondering if they were communicating by other means. All were lightly clad in leathers and dark, gossamer-like cloth, while their bodies were almost distressingly tall and aquiline, their large, black eyes seeming to dominate their jagged, white faces. Shiver actually appeared stocky and well-built by comparison, though Astarra wasn’t sure if that was because he hailed from a different clan, or because he had spent so long away from the tunnels and passages of his birth.

  The Aethyn led them on, traversing the twisting depths, through stalactite-studded chambers that the runeflames struggled to penetrate and along narrow, jagged cracks in vast cavern walls that stretched up into the surrounding dark. Astarra took in the mountain’s core as they went, wondering whether light had ever disturbed its unknowable darkness. It was the opposite of Thelgrim, that sat like an unearthed jewel for all to see. These places were buried, secret still, the primordial roots of Mennara itself. It made the delving of the dwarfs, that had seemed so wondrous when Astarra had first beheld it, appear small and childish in comparison.

  At one point, passing along a low passage, the daggerband came to a stop. The elves, all taller than Astarra, seemed to find no discomfort in remaining stooped. She crouched, realizing as she did so that there was a low, quiet conversation passing between the Aethyn. Tension hung in the air. Shiver tapped her on the side and murmured in her ear.

  “Douse your flame.”

  Her instinctive response was to refuse, but she caught the gaze of the nearest deep elves, glancing back at her urgently. She closed her eyes, held her breath, and reached out into the Turning to snuff out the Ignis, wincing slightly as doing so singed her soul.

  She opened he
r eyes to total darkness. Her heart began to race, her mind filled with horrible possibilities. They were afraid, she realized. What terrible thing had they disturbed down here? What could make these people of the Deeps pause and cower in a small rock cleft like this?

  She felt something on her shoulder, and almost cried out before she realized it was Shiver’s hand, gripping her. A warning? Reassurance? Could he sense her panic? She held her breath, trying to see in the darkness, trying to sense what had given the others pause.

  “What was it?” she dared ask. Though her voice was hoarse and barely a whisper, it sounded painfully loud in the crushing, silent darkness that had enveloped them.

  “Latath kii,” one of the elves in front of her said. While she didn’t understand the words, she recognized the warning tone.

  “It’s best not to question,” Shiver said.

  Finally, it seemed that whatever had brought the daggerband to a halt was gone. Astarra was allowed to reignite her staff. They carried on, slowly and quietly.

  She realized after a while that she could hear the sound of running water, echoing gently along the passage they were taking. At first, she thought they’d reached another waterfall, before realizing that the tunnel ran over a subterranean stream, a dark flow that rushed by beneath them, visible beyond the ledge they were following.

  She almost slipped into it several times. The rock underfoot was moist and thick with mushrooms and other fungal growths, blooming in the shadows by the waterway. She wondered if it was the same river that passed into Thelgrim and the lake via the artifice of the Dunwarr aqueduct.

  The ledge led into a wider cavern where the water was more clearly visible, bubbling between rocks worn smooth by its passage over the millennia. They crossed to the other side along a spur of rock – again, Astarra couldn’t tell if it was natural or had been formed as a bridge by the elves – before reaching a part of the cavern that she abruptly realized was already occupied.