The Gates of Thelgrim

by Robbie MacNiven

  Two veteran Dunwarr warriors, all-but fully equipped, and a single, narrow stairway, with a dead end and an angry jailer behind him – ostensibly, Raythen knew the odds were against him. But that was why he’d been on a diet.

  The first of the guards hit the steps he’d covered in slop. The effect was immediate. The Dunwarr lost his footing and went flying. The second, following immediately behind, didn’t do any better – he threw a hand out in an attempt to arrest his momentum, dropping his axe, but at the same time his iron-shod boot hit the paste and slipped through it. He went the way of his accomplice.

  Raythen found himself faced with a cascading wall of metal, crashing down the steep set of stairs towards him. He threw himself down ahead of them and took cover in the open cell doorway as they clattered thunderously to the bottom of the shaft.

  He was on them almost before they’d come to a halt. The one without the helmet was already unconscious, his brow bearing a nasty gash, but the other was trying to rise. His axe was attached to his wrist by a strap, which Raythen now relieved him of as he bore him back down against the steps, gripping the rim of his dented helmet with his other hand. He tore it off before the warrior could fully recover, and administered a crack to his head with the heavy, blunt back of the axe. The warrior slumped back, as unconscious as his partner.

  Cursing the weight of their armor, Raythen started to drag first one, then the other into the open cell, their steel plate grating off the bare stone.

  “Help!” the shackled jailer shouted, his voice echoing up the shaft stairs. “Somebody! The prisoner is free!”

  “Hold your tongue, or I’ll hack it out,” Raythen grunted, waving the stolen axe in his face. “Be thankful I’m not dispatching all three of you.”

  The jailer went silent, then scoffed when he saw that Raythen had started to hastily unbuckle one of the comatose guards’ armor.

  “You’re not really going to try and walk out of the Dunwol Kenn Karnin by dressing up as one of the Warriors’ Guild?” he demanded. Raythen shot him a half-smile.

  “You know, I laughed at that idea too. But sometimes the old tricks are the best.”

  “You’ll never make it.”

  “Pray to the Ancestors I do,” Raythen said, fastening the clasps of a breastplate over his jerkin. It was a little too big, and clattered and scraped against the pauldrons when he moved, but it would do for now. “Because if this works, you won’t have to spend your days sitting at the bottom of this miserable pit, shoving slop through a hatch.”

  The jailer seemed to consider that for a moment, then shrugged.

  “True enough.”

  Raythen retrieved the warrior’s fallen helmet, shield, and the keys for the shaft’s upper hatch. He paused to raise a single finger to his lips, looking pointedly at the jailer, then eased the cell door shut and locked it behind him.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  There were two guards watching over the Dunwol Kenn Karnin’s water gate. They were sitting at a table in the small docking chamber, playing Skerei, an old Dunwarr board game. The first they knew of the Aethyn incursion was Talarin surging from the still waters beside them, his long daggers drawn.

  They tried to resist, and died over their unfinished game, blood welling around the pieces. Talarin cleaned his blades as the rest of the daggerband pulled themselves up out of the water.

  “Did you have to cut their throats?” Shiver asked, as he surveyed the slumped bodies. “I’d hoped we would be able to do this without killing.”

  “Yes,” Talarin said coldly. Shiver looked at Maelwich, who shook her head.

  “There are many times to show mercy,” she said. “Leading a raid into the enemy’s heartland isn’t one of them.”

  “The Dunwarr aren’t the enemy,” Shiver said. “Not yet.”

  “Today they are,” Maelwich replied. “Hopefully, tomorrow, they won’t be.”

  Of that at least, Shiver was thankful. He had stayed beneath the mountain to try and stop the spread of death and darkness, but a full-blown war between the deep elves and the dwarfs would result in much the same thing. He only hoped the rest of the daggerband, including Talarin, shared their leader’s attitude.

  He turned back to help Astarra up onto the firm stone of the chamber’s dock. She was shaking with cold and exhaustion. He felt a pang of concern, one that no longer surprised him when it came to his human companion.

  “Now might be the time for your runefire,” he said gently, as she rung water from her thick braid.

  She nodded and retrieved the blackened little rock. Shiver could feel the heat of it as she slotted it home.

  “Can you sense them?” she asked Shiver, the spark seeming to reignite inside her as she grasped her dripping staff. “Raythen and Mavarin?”

  “Not clearly, no,” Shiver said. “The fortress is large, and it is full of souls. More are coming throughout the city. Warriors, I think. We will need to make our way through the halls until I can get a better understanding of who resides here.”

  “I suspect the Dunwarr and their king might have something to say about that,” Maelwich said. She pointed to a pair of great chains that dangled from the chamber’s ceiling down into the water running in from the Blackwater. “That could help us. We’ll be able to progress at least one level more without being detected.”

  “Possibly,” Shiver allowed, looking up at the dark hatch the chains passed through. They were for ferrying buckets from the lake up into the fortress proper, a simpler system than carrying them by hand up the stairways that riddled the structure. By climbing up they’d potentially be able to work their way deep into the Dunwol Kenn Karnin before having to take to the halls and passages.

  The sonorous blast of a horn rang through the chamber, echoing down from the stairwell and from the bucket hatch. Two short notes and one long. He didn’t know what the noise meant, but he doubted it was good. Concerned, he exchanged a glance with Astarra.

  “Is that the alarm?” she wondered aloud. “Do they know we’re here?”

  Maelwich answered her question.

  “No. But I’ve heard those notes before. They rang along the mountain roots years ago, during the last Deepling War.”

  “What do they mean?” Astarra asked.

  “They mean that King Ragnarson is mustering the full strength of the Warriors’ Guild,” Maelwich said. “They mean the Dunwarrs are at war.”

  •••

  The last thing Astarra wanted was to return to the chill of the water. Only the heat of the Ignis had worked the cold out from the core of her being. She had to though – the Aethyn were already starting to scale the bucket chains, darting hand-over-hand with disconcerting dexterity up the twin lengths.

  “What happened?” Astarra asked Shiver quietly, before he stepped in after them. “In the lake? Why did you drag me to the surface?”

  He spent a moment considering his answer before replying.

  “I had another vision. Of the darkness.”

  “In the lake?”

  “Yes. I think it lies beneath it. And it’s still growing stronger. It means to swallow this entire city, then the whole mountain.”

  Astarra had feared as much. It felt as though time was running through their fingers, like the darkness was taunting them, leading them on foolish quests while it coiled, about to be unleashed. She nodded, martialing her strength.

  “Then we’d better hurry up and stop it.”

  Shiver dropped back down into the water, his glistening gray flesh a contrast to its murky blackness. Astarra slung her staff over her back and followed him in, almost moaning aloud as the bitter chill once more enveloped her. She grasped hold of one of the dangling chains and began to haul herself up, gripping it link by link as Shiver did the same with the opposite one.

  It was hard going. Tiredness gnawed at her, dragged her down like a weight, stole the
strength from her limbs. The chains were wet, and difficult to grasp. She tried to latch her legs around them, but that was even trickier. The rattling sound they made seemed painfully loud, echoing off the surface of the gently lapping water beneath.

  She went a handhold at a time, blocking out her fatigue, letting her determination drive her. She wasn’t going to falter now. She wasn’t going to be left behind, not on a venture she’d suggested.

  As Maelwich had anticipated, the shaft the chains hung from passed through a number of the Dunwol Kenn Karnin’s levels. The wall contained hatches a dwarf could reach through to collect one of the buckets being hoisted on the pully system. After passing the second one, in almost total darkness now, Shiver hissed something in elvish. Astarra just hoped he’d gotten a sense of where either Mavarin or Raythen were. She couldn’t go much further.

  Light spilled into the shaft as an elf higher up eased open one of the hatches. He pulled himself through it and kept it open for the rest to follow. Astarra silently thanked Kellos as she pulled herself up and threw a hand out, managing to grasp the hatch’s edge as the chain, now devoid of weight further up, swung dangerously.

  Pale hands hauled her through. She was about to curse out loud as she slumped awkwardly onto the stone floor on the other side, but Shiver’s cold hand clamped abruptly over her mouth, stifling her. He caught her eye and shook his head once.

  Astarra nodded, and the hand was removed. She crouched, looking around. It seemed as though they’d dropped out into the citadel’s kitchens. A large chamber filled with heavy, black metal stoves and solid table-slabs stretched away from the huddled, dripping band of deep elves. Dried herbs hung from the ceiling, fresh cavern-root vegetables lay half-chopped on the workstations, and pots bubbled and hissed, suspended over the row of fire pits. The heat was a stifling contrast to the chill of the Blackwater, and the air was full of the scents of slow-cooked meat and spices. It made her empty stomach ache.

  Thankfully, they appeared to have arrived during a prep break. There were no Dunwarr in immediate sight, though she could hear the clattering of pans and a carefree, disharmonious whistling coming from nearby. She risked a glance over the nearest bench and caught sight of a single dwarf in a stained white apron, working at scrubbing clean a vast stack of greasy plates and cutlery in a trough of soapy water. The racket he was making between his whistling and his clanging had masked the subtle sounds of the daggerband’s entry.

  She crouched back down and looked at Shiver, who nodded ahead, towards what appeared to be the kitchen’s back door. The Aethyn were moving out, darting along the aisle towards it.

  Astarra began to follow, crouched low, cringing with every step. How were they so accursedly quiet? She tried to time her movements with the clattering of the pans, making the final dash as the tuneless whistling reached its crescendo.

  The deep elves were waiting. Maelwich motioned her and Shiver forward as they passed through the door. Astarra rose, and just had time to take in the sight of a stone-cut, fire-lit corridor and an open doorway immediately to her right before she realized she was standing face-to-face with a dwarf.

  He stared at her, and she at him. He was portly and ruddy-faced, with a ginger beard and a crumpled cook’s cap. He was carrying a platter in his arms heaped with soil-encrusted telle bulbs.

  Maelwich reacted faster than either of them. She delivered an open-palmed chop to the Dunwarr’s neck. He went down instantly, his tray about to tumble. With reflexes that Astarra was barely able to follow, Maelwich caught it before it could clatter and spill.

  Astarra just stared, the series of events leaving her lagging. One of the Aethyn slipped past and grabbed the downed body of the Dunwarr, hauling him into the room he’d emerged from, to the right. She realized it was a pantry space, its shelves heavy with food.

  “Just unconscious,” Maelwich said quietly to Shiver, passing the platter to the other elf to leave in the pantry with the downed cook. “Happy?”

  “Delighted,” Shiver said, as the pantry door was shut. “But we need to be quick.”

  “You’re sure one of them is on this level?”

  “My certainty is relative. There’s only one way to be sure.”

  He set off along the corridor, the wet robes around his waist trailing. Astarra hurried after him, her body flushed with belated adrenaline as the rest of the Aethyn followed.

  They encountered their first proper resistance at the foot of a stairwell at the far end of the corridor. Two Dunwarr guards met Shiver. He reacted first, hissing a word of power. Almost instantly, the dwarfs were assailed by a wall of ice that froze their bodies and locked them in place, like silent, shocked statues that stared at the Aethyn as they passed. Not for the first time, Astarra felt a pang of alarm at the potency of Shiver’s powers. She could not imagine facing him when he had been a slave to the Ynfernael.

  The stairs took them to a lower ward. Shiver paused, apparently gathering his senses. As he did so, Astarra stole a glance through one of the arrow slits embedded in the thick wall.

  Beyond it lay Thelgrim, in all its glittering glory. The Blackwater lay off to the left, the road to the citadel’s main gate lying almost directly below. To her surprise, the route was almost full – serried blocks of dwarfs were marching down it towards the Dunwol Kenn Karnin, Dunwarr warriors arrayed for battle. She could hear the steady tramping of their boots.

  “There’s an army on its way here,” she said.

  “They are coming from their barracks across the city,” Maelwich said, looking out of the neighboring slit. “Answering the call to war. Thelgrim’s host is assembling, and I doubt it is the shadow they are readying to fight.”

  “Then all the more reason to hurry,” Astarra said. She felt as though she had been locked into an unfolding tragedy, and the chance to avert it was slipping rapidly away. It made her angry and anxious at the same time.

  “I have him,” Shiver said. “The next chamber is the lower undercroft. He is being held there.”

  “Which one?” Astarra asked.

  “Mavarin,” Shiver replied. “But we must be quick. More and more Dunwarr are arriving here with every passing moment.”

  He led them down another short flight of torch-lit stairs and into a tunnel not unlike the one where they had been held when they’d first arrived. Astarra realized as soon as she stepped out that the time for stealth was over.

  Six dwarfs occupied the undercroft, all warriors. Their shock at the sight of a band of deep elves and a human in the midst of their fastness lasted only a moment.

  “Azak ki!” barked one, drawing a short sword. Astarra raised her staff, but the elves were quicker. Maelwich and the daggerband were darting forward, their knives flashing in the firelight. The barrel-shaped ceiling of the undercroft resounded with the clash of steel and a bellow of fury, followed by a cry of pain as the first of the Dunwarr went down.

  It all happened before Astarra could reach within and summon up her runes. Dunwarr made for fearsome warriors, and the narrowness of the stony space worked in their favor, but they were too scattered along the corridor’s length. Elvish steel took them, driving in at the weak points of their heavy armor – throats, armpits, hips. A single member of Maelwich’s band found his knife lodged between the steel, and didn’t manage to dodge the axe stroke that came back his way, cleaving into his shoulder. Blood burst across the stone wall and made one of the torches hiss and gutter.

  That was the end of it. Maelwich knelt by the side of the one fallen elf, grasping his hand as his life slipped away. Talarin was doing the reverse to the dwarf, finishing the wounded warrior with a sharp thrust of his dagger. Shiver looked at him hard before walking down the corridor between the fallen bodies, like a specter come to collect the souls of the slain. His eyes were on the cell doors that ranked the undercroft’s sides. He stopped abruptly at one, looked to Maelwich and gestured at it.

  “He
’s in there.”

  One of the daggerband retrieved the keys from a Dunwarr body. Astarra joined Shiver as he unlocked the heavy door.

  A single figure occupied the far corner of the cell beyond. He was crouching in terror, his face half hidden by his hands. It took a moment for Astarra to recognize Mavarin. She felt a rush of relief, twinned with a surge of fresh determination.

  “Ancestors protect me,” the disheveled inventor croaked.

  “We’re here to get you out,” Astarra said brusquely, striding into the cell. Mavarin looked up at her. He’d grown a scraggy beard since she’d last seen him.

  “How are you here?” he asked, seemingly doubting whether he was dreaming or not. “Some arcane sorcery?”

  “No,” said Maelwich from the doorway – she had joined Shiver, and she raised one of her daggers, glistening red in the firelight. “Something far simpler.”

  “More elves,” Mavarin hissed, scrambling back against the cell wall. Astarra snatched his arm and dragged him to his feet.

  “We’ve risked everything to break you out of here. You’re coming with us. Where is Raythen?”

  “I d- don’t know,” the inventor stammered. “I only saw him during the trial. They kept him somewhere else.”

  Maelwich came and started to unlock Mavarin’s shackles. He looked up at the tall elf with undisguised fear.

  “They’re friends,” Astarra told him.

  “They want the Hydra, don’t they?” Mavarin asked. “I’ve already told everyone, I don’t know w- where it is!”

  “This isn’t about the Hydra,” Astarra said, doing her best to reassure him. Time in the Dunwarr cell seemed to have gone some way towards breaking him. It made her wonder just what had happened to Raythen. Seeing his father’s attitude towards him, she doubted separate treatment would mean preferential treatment. Was he even still alive?