The Gates of Thelgrim

by Robbie MacNiven

  They’d found an Aethyn encampment. Minimalistic structures of cloth and slender pieces of timber had been erected between the stalagmites at the far end, marking out an area where dozens of deep elves were congregated. Astarra saw young and old alike, gathered in small groups and staring at her as she passed. They were without the lean leathers that seemed to count for armor with the Aethyn warriors, but otherwise were similarly clad in light-wearing, dark-colored garb that appeared to have been woven, at least in part, from the rough fungal fibers of the countless blooms that clung to the rocks by the river. The women’s hair was worn up, piled high on their crowns, and the menfolk had their hair pleated, while the children, universally, seemed to have theirs cropped.

  Astarra took it all in as she was led into the encampment. She was surprised to see her runefire, which seemed to be the biggest source of interest among the elves, was not the only light illuminating this part of the cavern. Many of the Aethyn were clustered around what appeared to be particularly large, fluted fungal growths. The tips seemed to have been set alight, and were giving off a small, green-tinged flame.

  She didn’t have time to ponder the strange light source. The daggerband came to a stop, close to what appeared to be the cavern wall.

  Maelwich said something to Shiver, who replied with a questioning tone. A short conversation ensued, before Shiver spoke to Astarra.

  “They wish to question us both,” he said.

  “About what?” Astarra hissed back, trying and failing not to sound alarmed.

  “I have spoken of the darkness I have sensed beneath Thelgrim,” Shiver went on. “They wish to hear more of it.”

  “Perhaps you should tell them none of that has anything to do with me,” Astarra pointed out.

  “I would advise coming with me and saying little,” Shiver said. “Because right now, it is only the will of Maelwich that is keeping us both alive.”

  Shiver stepped away before Astarra could respond and made a series of terse hand movements towards Maelwich that Astarra took to mean acquiescence. He nodded to her, then moved to the cavern wall.

  There was a crack in the base of it. Shiver stooped and disappeared into the darkness beyond. Astarra hesitated just long enough to glance at Maelwich and the other deep elves, before deciding she’d rather risk the cavern depths.

  She followed Shiver in, grimacing as she was forced to bend almost double. Her staff, held ahead of her, lit up a small chamber that lay off the main cavern, mercifully widening enough to allow her to stand once more.

  Shiver was waiting, his face pale and unreadable in the runefire. She didn’t have time to ask him anything more – Maelwich and three other elves slipped in after her, confronting both of them.

  Maelwich spoke to Shiver in the elven tongue, and he responded in kind. Astarra endured the back-and-forth of the sharp-edged conversation for as long as she could before snapping.

  “Enough,” she said abruptly. Five sets of dark eyes turned towards her. She felt a surge of defiance as she looked from Shiver to Maelwich.

  “They might not know the common tongue, but you do,” she said to Shiver. “So, I’d appreciate at least some translation, especially as it seems like the outcome of this conversation might be more than a little important, for both of us. What’s she saying?”

  “I’m asking why a human sorceress is accompanying him along the roots of the denwal far,” Maelwich said, catching her by surprise. Her voice was precise and cutting, though it never seemed to rise, even when giving orders.

  “I was not aware I had to have a reason to walk beneath the mountain,” Astarra said. Shiver shot her a warning glance.

  “We were hired to come here, to seek an item stolen from the Dunwarr,” Shiver said. “There is nothing more to it than that.”

  “And yet we find you fleeing from them,” Maelwich said. “Implying you are the thief.”

  “There was a misunderstanding,” Astarra said. “In fact, this entire venture feels like one great misunderstanding. I assure you, trapped in one of the caverns you call home is far from where I wish to be right now.”

  “Watch your tongue, runechild,” said one of the other elves accompanying Maelwich. He was the tallest of them all, his plaited hair a dark auburn that turned fiery in the light of Astarra’s staff. Talking to her seemed to disgust him.

  “Aro sar, Talarin,” Maelwich said sharply, before Astarra could summon a response. The elf smiled coldly, but said nothing more.

  Maelwich and Shiver exchanged several more words Astarra didn’t understand before the Aethyn addressed her again.

  “You have seen the shadow?”

  “The what?” Astarra asked, genuine confusion taking the sting out of her anger.

  “The tanab ru fél, the shadow that hungers. Have you seen it, beneath the mountain?”

  The words made little sense to her, but as Maelwich said them, Astarra found her mind drawn back to the darkness in the tunnel, the one that seemed to have stood and spited her runefire before reluctantly withdrawing. Despite the heat of the Ignis, she felt a chill run through her body.

  “You have seen it,” Shiver said, noticing her reaction. “Then it is as I feared. Not just some phantom memory which haunts me, but a living reality.”

  “This place is full of shadows,” she said, trying to mask her uncertainty with further defiance. “I feel as though I have trod in nothing but darkness since being led down here. How can any of you tell one of these shadows from another?”

  Maelwich and Shiver shared a glance, the meaning of which Astarra couldn’t fathom.

  “Darkness alone is nothing to my kind,” Maelwich said, apparently for Astarra’s benefit. “But this is something more. Something has escaped from beneath Thelgrim. It is hungry, and it is hunting my people. It will not stop until it has devoured us all, human, dwarf and deep elf alike.”

  Astarra tightened her grip on her staff, unconsciously casting a glance at the shadows beyond the light of her runefire. Too late, she was beginning to understand that she had strayed into something far more dangerous than a quest to retrieve a simple runeshard. And the worst thing was, she knew it was now far too late to turn back. She could only go on, deeper into the dark, and trust her unlikely companions to do the same with her.

  •••

  The sound of hammer striking anvil rang once again through the throne room, battling with the wall of noise coming from the amphitheater sides.

  “Lies and fabrication,” Raythen barked above the tumult, raising his hands so all could see the chains that bound him. “I knew this fate awaited me should I return to Thelgrim. There is a reason I have not come home in twenty years. But to suggest I traveled here to assist in stealing the Hydra Shard, as Master Krellen insinuates, is an absolute fabrication!”

  The jeers grew louder, and Ragnarson’s strikes upon the anvil grew heavier. It took a long time for either to abate.

  Krellen had been leading the questioning for over an hour now. At no point had he wavered from what seemed to be the council’s main strategy – accuse Raythen in particular of either stealing the Hydra Shard or, at the very least, coming to Thelgrim with the intention of stealing it. He’d already pointed out that those constituted two very different claims, but Krellen was relentless. Ragnarson, the only member of the trial with the authority to change the line of questioning, had done nothing but demand silence every time the guild members jeered Raythen’s protestations.

  “Answer me this then, Master Ragnarson,” Krellen called out as the tumult finally started to recede. He’d been calling Raythen ‘Master Ragnarson’ since the start of the trial, in an obvious attempt at insulting his father. “If you had no part in the scheme to steal the Hydra Shard, why did you join with this known reprobate and so strenuously resist the brave efforts of the Warrior Guild to return you to the Dunwol Kenn Karnin? It is only by the ancestor’s mercy that there w
ere no fatalities during your botched escape attempt!”

  “I am no reprobate,” Mavarin said loudly, before Raythen had a chance to respond. “I am the Master of the League of Invention, and you will address me as such!”

  The throne room thundered with laughter, echoing and rebounding from the vaulted roof. Krellen smirked cruelly down at Mavarin.

  “There is no such thing as the ‘League of Invention’, and you are certainly no master,” he exclaimed. “Your antics belong in the Duldor Deeps with the rest of those disrespectful tinkerers. You are deluded, and your disrespectful antics have troubled the guilds of this fair city for far too long. We have humored you in the past, but no more. Even if you are nothing but a useful tool for Master Ragnarson, you are an accomplice to his heinous crimes, and you shall share in the verdict delivered by this jury.”

  “You speak as though the sentence has already been decided upon,” Mavarin said, his tone at once bitter and angry. “Is this what has become of the great Guild Council of Thelgrim? That noble body that has steered our people’s efforts for centuries? A sham trial?”

  A squall of anger met Mavarin’s accusation. Ragnarson beat upon his anvil angrily until the worst of it had subsided. Raythen rolled his eyes, silently damning Mavarin for goading their judges. He was leaving him with no choice, not if they wanted to regain the initiative and get out of this mess alive.

  “Enough!” Ragnarson barked, glaring at the raucous assembly. “I have heard enough for now. The council will adjourn until this evening.”

  “No,” Raythen said sharply, almost surprising himself. He had never heard silence settle over the Guild Council so rapidly.

  “Adjourn if you wish,” he said in the echoing stillness that followed. “But only for a while. I am calling upon my rights as a child of Thelgrim, and of the Dunwarrs. I am demanding I be allowed to sit the Trial of the Mountain.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Shiver opened his eyes. He did not remember falling asleep. Exhaustion, it seemed, had finally caught up with him.

  He looked around the small cavern where Maelwich had left them. Astarra was asleep too, curled up, still clutching her staff. Its light had gone out.

  He sat for a moment, gathering his thoughts. A part of him was surprised their throats hadn’t been slit while they slept. Maelwich’s second, the fire-haired Talarin, had displayed nothing but loathing for both of them since they’d been taken. As for Maelwich herself, Shiver was less certain. She had, it seemed, only just been elected to the leadership of the Aethyn. She had tersely informed them both that she would seek the council of the rest of the clan before speaking any further.

  More disconcerting was the fact that she remembered Shiver. She had known him from the time before, the dark time, when he had still been a slave to the terrible will of his mistress. It seemed he had visited this place before. It was no surprise that the daggerband that had happened across them on the Hearth Road had attacked out of hand, and little wonder that the one he had killed had snarled that word with his dying breath.

  Daewyl. Fallen one. Slave-servant of the Ynfernael. That was what he had been, when last he had trod the deepling places of the Dunwarrs, the mountain roots known by the Aethyn as the denwal far.

  Yet Maelwich had spared him. She had resisted the impulse to strike. Why, he didn’t yet know. She had said little since he’d encountered her. He had no doubt there was more to their story, though just what he didn’t know. Not for the first time, his memories mocked him. It embarrassed him, it frustrated him, and he knew that unless he found one of the locks or was graced with a vision of his past, there was nothing he could do about it. At the best of times he tried to remain calm and focused, to keep that anger locked away. Under stress though it became increasingly difficult. He had repeated his mantra so often in the past few days, trying to keep his thoughts under control, to not let fear and discord become the master of him. When that happened, dark things followed.

  Atali nametha ren. The path is the purpose. Nameth hatala. The path goes on.

  When they’d been caught at the foot of the slope shaft, Shiver had told her he was hunting the hungering dark. That seemed to have played a part in staying her hand. What little she’d said to them so far had been about the darkness. She had sensed it too, apparently. She said it had changed everything. He had heard fear in her voice.

  He sat for a little while, considering Astarra. She had come this far with him. How much of that was due to self-preservation, greed, or a genuine, deeply buried desire to help, he wasn’t sure. She was afraid, he knew, and far from anything she counted familiar. Her outward arrogance and fiery determination was more a mask than genuine. She was accustomed to self-reliance, but in these deep, stony, silent places she had found herself in the hands of those she neither knew nor trusted. Her fortitude impressed him, though he doubted she would have much cared for his opinion.

  He rose silently, cast one more glance at Astarra’s sleeping form, and ducked out of the small cave. Maelwich had said that neither of them were being forcibly confined before she’d departed, though obviously that was only half true. Beyond the cave lay the Aethyn camp, the cavern acting as their temporary home while they migrated through the Deeps. He knew the two of them would not be able to leave without Maelwich’s permission.

  Twin warrior-elves stood by the entrance to the cave, watching him as he ducked out. Neither made any move to stop him. Shiver greeted them in the manner of the Aethyn.

  “Maelwich?” he asked. The two looked at each other before one spoke, neither returning his greeting-sign.

  “I will take you.”

  The warrior led him through the encampment. Eyes followed him, lifted from fish skinning, weaving and pleating. Hushed conversation stopped altogether. Little ones hid themselves behind their parents.

  Distrust and fear were Shiver’s constant companions, but it was strange, being back amongst so many kin, even if the clan they hailed from was foreign to him. It made him feel uncomfortable in a way he hadn’t known for some time. What had he done here, to earn this? What crimes had he committed within these very caverns, memories that now maddeningly eluded him? Why, if his return conjured up such dread, had he been spared in the first place, even allowed to walk with a modicum of freedom?

  The warrior’s path took them to the heart of the camp, where an open-sided covering had been erected between a trio of thick, fungus-encrusted stalagmites. Their twins in the cavern roof above dripped moisture down onto the shelter, the air damp and heavy, so close to the underground river.

  There were six elves arrayed in council beneath the cover, sitting cross-legged around a small, lit jaela root. Their conversation ceased as the warrior led Shiver amongst them and introduced him.

  “Leave us,” Maelwich instructed her kin. They rose without complaint and departed, all bar Talarin.

  “You should not be alone with this daewyl,” he said, looking at Shiver as he spoke. He forced himself not to react to the insult. He was in no position to pick a fight, and besides, he felt responsible for Astarra. He had led her down here, and now she was in the midst of a place that was strange and dangerous to her. It was equally strange for him to have to consider the wellbeing of others, but he found it helping his control. He would get them both out of this.

  “You know I do not repeat my instructions, Talarin,” Maelwich told him. He made a parting gesture to her and left. Shiver felt the hostility crackling from his thoughts as he passed by.

  “Sit,” Maelwich said, nodding to the vacated space across the jaela from her. Shiver did so, hitching his robes so he could cross his legs in imitation of the stance of the Aethyn leader.

  “You have more questions,” Maelwich surmised. “That is well enough, for I do too.”

  “Questions and answers make for the best of friends,” Shiver said, quoting a common deep elf phrase. “Perhaps we might therefore find some form of
friendship here.”

  “Perhaps,” Maelwich said, the faint, green-tinged light of the jaela giving her sharp features a brooding under-glow. “The clan council are divided over what to do with you. Talarin believes you are the source of the darkness. He thinks you should be ritually slain.”

  “Talarin strikes me as someone who has been leading an Aethyn daggerband in the hunt for too long,” Shiver said. “His soul is like a notched blade.”

  “You are perceptive,” Maelwich said. “But Talarin is rarely wrong. He has helped guide us through many troubles.”

  “Yet he does not lead it?” Shiver asked. He was slowly trying to put together a picture of the Aethyn, and of the elf sitting opposite him. Right now, their goals, fears and needs seemed almost as opaque as his own memories.

  “I was elected by the Aethyn,” Maelwich said. “Not Talarin. A good leader knows when to heed advice, and when to spurn it.”

  “Is that the reason I’m still alive?” Shiver asked.

  “In part.”

  “You knew me from the moment you saw me,” Shiver went on, wondering out loud. “How?”

  “We all know you, Shiver,” Maelwich said. “Or we know the stories. They are not always the same thing.”

  “You know me through more than just stories,” Shiver pointed out, seeking the truth of the matter. He had been shocked when Maelwich had first confronted him with recognition, and had been plagued by the potential ramifications ever since. Being recognized by someone he couldn’t recall wasn’t an unknown sensation – it occurred time and again during his travels. He hadn’t expected it here though, in the darkness beneath mountains on the other side of Terrinoth from the place he called home.

  “I know recognition when I see it,” he went on.

  “You really don’t remember, do you?” Maelwich asked, her reserve momentarily giving way to surprise. “So that much of the legend is true, at least.”

  “My past was taken from me,” Shiver said. “Taken and shattered into a thousand fragments. I have pieced together some of it, but none of the parts that belong to this place.”