The Bogroo happily hopped back down its hole, grateful at last to be out of the sun’s gaze. It thought carefully which would be the quickest route to the barrow. Once decided the Bogroo slid nimbly through its tunnel network. The last thing Palodar and Cezzum heard, before they became lost in darkness, was a cheerful tune the Bogroo started to sing as it strode through the soil.
Bones are snapping; life is cackling,
Far, far, beneath the ground.
Mud and mire are my own fire,
Far, far, beneath the ground.
Turning, yearning, festering and churning;
Grasses grow in this loamy-lo.
Hands and feet and heads so tall,
Make flowers flush and the evening lush,
Far, far, beneath the ground.
With a final hush you can hear their chatter,
Forever, forever, their pitter-patter,
Far, far, beneath the ground.
Cezzum groaned noisily when he finally started to awaken. It was completely dark around him, apart from a small speck of silvery light a few yards at the summit of his vision. The goblin stood up and instantly sat back down again as his head walloped into something above. Rubbing his pate in the veiling darkness, he called out: “Palodar! Palodar! Are thee there?”
A low moan suggested the goblin’s cries had roused the dwarf. “Ayerg.”
“Do not—,” yelled Cezzum, but a moment too late.
“Gah!” exclaimed Palodar; a loud thud rumbled overhead. The dwarf, forced to sit down as well, rubbed his head in union with the goblin and mumbled to himself as Cezzum cackled deviously over his shared injury.
A voice rang out in their minds, as if it were planted inside their consciousness, for their ears did not hear it.
“Heere yoo-u goo my-y litttle friends; yoo-u arre justt outsidde the baroow, annd aaah littlleee biiit under-rneeeath itt. Ii hadd tooo leaave quicklyy annd couuld nott waiit forr both of yoo-u tooo start; som-me felloow tooo th-he nortth diied up-on the Leaas. Butt Ii tunn-neld tooo the surfaccce, yoo-u juust hav-ve tooo breaak throough. Itt wass moost fun taalking tooo yoo-u both annd loooking throough yoo-ur miinds – Ii hope yoo-u doon’t minnd.” The Bogroo’s voice laughed loudly. “Baaooooo! Ii hope yoo-u com-me baack annd vis-it oone day - jusst staand on the Leaas annd Ii willl knoww iit iss yoo-u. Besst of lu-ck on yoo-ur jour-rney, yoo-ur deaaad friennnd, Bogroo!”
“Thank you!” Cezzum called out, unsure if Bogroo could somehow hear them. Palodar, with his own husky voice, added his gratitude as well.
“All well?” asked Cezzum.
“Let me check!” responded the dwarf; he patted his body from tip to toe. “Nothing digested, friend! All is well!”
The companions then began to crawl along the tunnel towards the silvery light. Cezzum punched his hand into the soil; after three more jabs the thin sheet of ground came loose, opening the hole above. Palodar spluttered, blowing globules and blasts of muck out of his mouth. They climbed the short lip of the hole and exited the Bogroo’s tunnel.
Chapter V
The Tomb of the Living
C ezzum and Palodar did not know how long they had been inside the Bogroo, nor how much time had passed since they had left the brisk autumn morning in the far east of the plains. It was the dead of night as the two emerged from the hole, but the scene before them was almost as bright and clear as the balmiest of days, for not a single cloud dared to cross the heavens. Fesser was nearing its zenith and Asthen was midway through its cycle; the two moons together bathed the entire area in a soft, soothing, silvery light mingled with wondrous coruscations of crimson.
Standing together the two halflings absorbed the vista before them. The air was as stolid as a thousand-year-old mountain, as if the atmosphere was too afraid to move, clinging to every hair and fibre around the dwarf and goblin. Flowers which had once grown abundantly within the rolling fields were now few and far between, scattered amongst lofty, verdant grass. Cezzum was afraid to think of how much carnage must have taken place in their surroundings, in years long past, to fertilise such a lush meadow. Palodar shivered at the eerie silence around him; the only noise that he could glean was his own breathing; his own breath seemed magnified into a harsh, unrelenting drumming in his ears. The lack of any nocturnal noise whatsoever was clawing and disconcerting; not the faintest of chirps from crickets nor a nightingale’s chirrup, or even the swish of a bat as it darted through the air, could be heard. Regardless of the ethereal climes that clung to their senses, it was the sight they found that stood before them that then swiftly siphoned the two wayworn companions’ eyes as well as the soul of their attention.
A hundred yards before them a steep knoll rose up from the ground. The sharply graded barrow, which was no fewer than a dozen feet high, was surrounded be numerous embossed stone columns, arranged around the mound in a perfect circle. The pinnacles of the columns held no roof, but were simply left barren, if it were their purpose was to hold the sky up above. Two massive, stalwart iron wrought doors, reinforced with great crossbars, and the largest hinges the two friends had ever seen, were firmly entrenched into the knoll, marking the sole entrance into the tomb. Great rings, presumably the handles, yet seeming more suited for giants rather than men, lay inset in large circular recesses within the daunting doors. Cezzum and Palodar moved towards the Barrow of Arcun’son, King of the Cevrain and the first liege of men.
The air was torpid and heavy, dense beyond any measure either the goblin or the dwarf had ever waded through before. Each step they took reverberated loudly as soft grass cried out, crunched, beneath their boots. Even more startling were their exhalations of breaths; they not only hung in the air as if it were the coldest of days in a scornful winter, but also weaved themselves into spurious shapes and images and writhing forms of the most nerve shivering nature: ghastly phantasmagorias of wounded faces; tormented, weeping forms clutching at unseen wounds; malformed men torn asunder by grisly wounds, many of whom staggered about aimlessly, seemingly howling in lament. But the two friends pushed on through ethereal disbelief, their hands tremulously, yet firmly, clutching the grips of their swords.
Their motion became laborious and it felt that time surrounding them was too terrified to enter this area of the Leas, as if that linear stream of sanguine misery found the place too hallowed. As they came upon the columns rising to an apex higher than the barrow itself, sounds and their hearing became drab and dull and deadened; it were as if two invisible hands were clasped tightly over their ears. On closer inspection the columns were not entirely engraved with patterns, but were rather etched with thousands of lines of text and glyphs. The inscriptions ran down the entire length of the pillars.
Cezzum approached one of the free-standing supports. The words, within the tapestry of symbols, appeared to be an ancient form of ænglix, the language and tongue now used by all woman and man alike, for it bore many etymological similarities. The goblin, although well versed from years of practise with ænglix, could not fathom the words or the pictorial ciphers written before him.
“Can you comprehend the text?” inquired Cezzum, his usual touch of sibilance turning dour in the fusty air.
Palodar looked studiously at the pillar. “A word or two perhaps; my uncle would have been more suited for this task; he has lived through many ages of men. But this word here,” – the dwarf pointed at two words and a glyph depicting three drops of blood encircled by a crown – “means that the King, the larger drop of blood, and his two sons, the smaller drops of blood, died upon this field.”
The dwarf’s finger scrolled down the stone embossments; he shook his head and shrugged his shoulders. His finger stopped at another set of words and images. The vignette displayed an arrow piercing a raven. Hesitantly, Palodar said, “I might be misreading the phrase, but I believe it tells of a great evil that was slain here. The evil, I think, is represented by the raven and this word here: ‘mælgvolen’. You see; if you pronounce it May-el-eg-ol-en it bears many similarities to t
he loranic and elven tongues, meaning wicked or fell. And this,” Palodar’s podgy finger scrolled further along the same line, “this here says that when the evil had perished its soul cursed the land around it for many leagues, so that none that had fallen in the battle might ever be free to rest; only a tormented eternity awaits.”
Cezzum shuddered at the horrendous fate that had befallen those that had died upon the ground on which he stood.
“The only sward of the Leas that was saved from the curse was where the King was vanquished; where the barrow now lies,” informed Palodar. “That is the short and short of it, embellishing a few gaps, so to speak.”
“That much knowledge contained in but those few inscriptions?” said Cezzum, remarkably.
Palodar looked up and down the height of the column. “Aye, it seems to be an entire account of the great war which raged upon these plains. I bet my beard that the other pillars continue the saga started by this one. This one reads similar to an introduction or glossary - a concise account of what had happened.” The dwarf pointed to the lower two feet of the stone. “Here starts the actual account. This jagged line here is still in use by lorans to signify change in paragraphs and thoughts. I would not be surprised if the entire history of the Cevrain could be found on these pillars. Ancient humans did enjoy writing down almost everything that happened, much like our Great Walls of Legacy in the tunnels between Palu’don and the east town of Darantur.”
Cezzum looked on in mystified awe at the stone structures for a minute or two before he nudged his dwarven friend that they had best continue. Their breath still hung heavily in the air and as they approached the tomb, the lurching monstrous figures grew more and more grisly in their ephemeral existence. Yet as soon as they stepped upon the first step leading to the barrow’s doors, the grotesque illusions evanesced, leaving just their warm breath hanging in the night air. Tentatively they ascended the few short steps and beheld the might of the gargantuan, iron doors pressed into the grassy mound. On closer inspection the gateway was much more intricately woven than previously thought. Relief work, displaying all manner of designs and scenes, were adeptly shaped into the doors and on the bracing stone around them. The doors displayed more of the same language and illustrations as the stone columns had, but contained numerous more emblems and crests, presumably the escutcheons of all the lords of the Cevrain. The most staggering decoration however glinted sumptuously around the portal, upon the surface of the doors’ frame. From the base of either door, rising high up alongside it and then arching over to meet in the centre above the entryway, were hundreds of small runic letters wrought from the most elegant marble the two friends had ever set their eyes upon; within the luminescence from the moons, the runes appeared to contain the purest alabaster hue known to the world.
The goblin ran his green finger over one of the pearlescent glyphs and instantly ripped it back, covering it with his other hand in an effort to warm it. “Never have I felt anything so cold! It burns as if it were a flame.”
Palodar looked at his friend’s finger, it was free from any lasting marble harm thanks to the swiftness of the goblin’s senses; he then turned his focus back to the runes; he snorted at them, whatever symbolic truth was held by each letter was sadly lost to the dwarf.
“Even these are beyond me,” said Palodar helplessly.
“Let us enter the unknown then, shall we?” suggested Cezzum hastily. “The less time we tarry here the better.”
“Agreed! I am not sure how much more of this horrific place my seated heart can take.”
Each of them stood before one of the massive gateways and prepared themselves, consciously strengthening their fortitude. Cezzum took a deep breath and placed his fingers on top of the large ring hanging from the door; Palodar did the same. The goblin nodded. The two companions pulled mightily, but their hands simply slid off the surface of the slick handles; the rings remained steadfastly entrenched in their circular alcoves.
Cezzum was flummoxed and stared at the portal. Palodar musingly inserted his fingers into his beard and curled his hair, until at last he said, “Well that was a touch disappointing, was expecting something... a little more; we journeyed all this way!” The dwarf drummed his knuckles against the door, which responded with a thick, dense staccato of thuds. “It seems we will not be breaking our way through. Any ideas Cezz-,”
Suddenly the quarry-shaped dais beneath their feet shuddered madly and the two friends stammered about for a moment trying to keep their footing. As swiftly as the quake had begun, it ended; before they could recollect themselves, several pairs of sheer arms, tinged with an unworldly, blue hue, rose up through the cobbled ground and clutched the feet of the goblin and dwarf, holding them down tightly; so powerful were the hands that bound them that despite all their strength, they could but wiggle a toe in their boots. The arms that had sprouted from the ground were even more horrid than the images that had formed in the two friends’ breath earlier. The appendages were absent what grim, ghostly skin might have hidden their innards, exposing veins, tendons and festering muscle beneath it; boils, sores and vicious lacerations ran along the entire length of them.
Palodar ripped his sword from its sheath and struck deftly at one of the hands clutching his right foot, but the blade passed through the fetter without a single sound to signal its slash.
Cezzum’s face was lined with terror and when he turned to look at Palodar, the dwarf’s own visage was pallid; drops of dreadful perspiration ran down his forehead and nose. Before Cezzum could utter a word of hollow encouragement, four, lofty, ghoulish men approached them, emerging straight out of the barred portal. The ghosts, like the hands and arms that bound them, shimmered with the same lambent, dull azure. The striding phantoms resembled human soldiers and were clad in mail armour and bore tabards of Cevrain design. A pair of them wore ringed coifs over their heads; the others donned small coronets. Their faces, and flesh unimpeded by coverings, or where old armour had been torn asunder, presented the same grotesque wounds and festering flesh that their shackling brethren below displayed. Each soldier took a position on either side of Cezzum and Palodar.
Palodar struck out repeatedly with his weapon, but to no avail. The apparition did not even acknowledge the blade swishing through its belly. All four men turned to look at their two captives; two soldiers gazed at the goblin while the other pair bore down upon the dwarf, their eyes filled with an ire that began to take the heart of the two friends. Beyond their control, fear shattering composure, Cezzum and Palodar cried out in panic, howling for succour that would never come. The two companions’ limbs became stiff and their bodies were paralyzed as the soldiers forcefully gripped each of their arms, rendering the two halflings completely effete by way of an enthralling, enveloping inanition. Palodar’s sword dropped insipidly to the ground below; no cold ring of metal sounded its fall. A thousand strident and nightmarish whispers filled their ears and Cezzum thought he was on the cusp of fainting. The voices, howling, furious, cacophonous and ripping, ceased. All was still again.
The runic glyphs within the frame of the portal ignited, shinning, flickering and burning wildly, their bright radiance challenging that of the moons. The luminescence raged; the runes grew stronger and more potent in their brilliance with each moment. At once the light from the glyphs dissipated and they were left merely to pulse a ponderously dull, pale hue.
Another diaphanous ghost strode through the sealed doors and came to a halt a foot before the goblin and the dwarf. The imposing form of a man, however, was different from his kin who constrained the helpless captives. He was loftier than all assembled; a burly phantasm that stood well over six-foot; he was robed in chain and plate coats of an illustrious nature. A large diadem crowned his head, encircling loose, wild hair that fell down well beyond his shoulders. His face was powerful, both in build and presence, but it was violently marred similarly to his kin. A full, thick, beard covered his face yet a swath of it had been ripped away, along with the flesh beneath it. F
rom his nose to his right cheek to his forehead, all skin had been withered away, revealing muscle and bone beneath. A regal, imperious mien suffused him. Two great eyes gouged into the two companions. When the harrowing ghoul spoke, his voice sounded as if it were three raspy and astringent voices joined in chorus, each one but a hair’s width behind the other; the voices scathed deeply into the minds of his captives. “You seek entry into my tomb. Why?”
The two friends were frozen by a peril lashing their awareness.
“Why?” repeated the apparition, his tone more acerbic than before.
Cezzum was visibly quavering, the daunting magnificence of the Fallen King made formulating any response in itself an arduous feat; the goblin barely achieved a stuttering reply: “I- We… bring- …a… mis-..-sive… to-… hu-..-mans… that are… inside.”
The king rumbled loudly, the sound droning into the ears of Cezzum and Palodar.
“Thy kind, goblin, are fell, and yours, dwarf, are filled with naught but indulgent avarice. My tomb is sanctified from the blight of this Lea. We do not linger here out of torment; it is a vestige of purity. No malign visitants shall gain entry into my hallowed halls.”
Palodar cried out in distress: “We hold no evil intent!”
The king’s eyes fixed upon the dwarf, so powerful were they that Palodar averted his own.
“Words are the vessels of artifice. I will judge your soul. Your words are now thine oath; if found untrue, both shall perish here and thine essence be plunged into eternal damnation.”
Tears ran freely down the halflings’ faces as the Fallen King stood stolidly before them. The king raised both his arms and pointed a flayed finger at both the dwarf and goblin.
“May, Treatchal, feast upon thine spirits!”
The king of the Cevrain inverted his hands; his palms faced upwards, towards the silent heavens. In one swift movement, he sinisterly thrust each of his hands into the chests of the halflings, clutching each of their hearts as he fervently applied an ever-increasing pressure to the organs, gradually, deliberately crushing their cores. Both friends howled in the most anguishing pain they had ever felt; their heads shot back, eyes bound to the shrouded sky, and the last vision either of them saw was a single star peeping through the descending pall.
The Good Goblin Page 8
