“Please, go on,” she prodded. “You were going to answer why they picked the three of you.”
“In order for their dreamwalkers to incarnate, they had to find natural-born channelers. It was thousands of years before three natural channelers with links born to each of the three elements of Light, Life, and Time were all born in the same generation.”
“You’re also a channeler?” Oriand asked.
“I was. I gave my link to Aaron. I couldn’t just initiate him into the Light and let him develop on his own. I gave him Archurion’s link. Any natural connection I once had was caught up in that.”
“So what made Aaron special? He wasn’t an avatar.”
“No,” Kaldor confirmed. “He was not. Until Aaron, every being, whether dragon, elf, human, or any other race, can only ever have one link. No one can channel two elements… or, no one could. Until him. Aaron was born with the capacity to hold four links. He wasn’t a natural channeler himself—he wasn’t born with it. But his soul could receive what was given to it. In the end, we gave him two: Light and Time. He never touched the powers of Life… or Dark, for that matter.”
“Do you have any idea what we’re going to find in Valkrage’s Vault?”
Kaldor cocked his head. “I have my suspicions, but I don’t know for sure. Valkrage hid something away from the gods’ awareness. Which means, my dear, that once we go inside, you must refrain from any runic magic.”
Oriand nodded.
* * *
Anuit walked in silence beside Arda as Kaldor and Oriand talked up ahead. Oriand had taken her to the markets the morning they left, purchasing travel clothing for her and the paladin. Arda had cleaned and still wore her zorium-weave armor. It wasn’t hot enough for her to abandon it. At least Arda’s leather duster was stowed in one of the saddlebags on their camel. Her tricorne hat’s brim shaded her face. Anuit, on the other hand, was sick of the same damned dress she had been wearing when she left Rille. Her new garb was a double layer of thin, tan robes that flowed loosely, and a hood that shielded her head from the sun. Oriand wore similar attire. Kaldor wore loose white trousers and a flowing cotton shirt underneath a thin outer-robe that carried his many pockets. All of them had scarves for the desert dust. It wasn’t quite so bad there on the riverbank, but Kaldor said they would need them for the latter part of their journey.
When the road turned west to skirt the mountain range towards Abreen Jungle, they left it behind, following the banks of Garden Lake around to the south. The lake was breathtaking, the most beautiful Anuit had ever seen. The lips of its green banks cradled azure water. At the southern end, they were framed by great cliffs of orange rock, sparkling with granite and quartz veins. The mouth of the lake was fed by a waterfall, not visible across the lake’s expanse at first until they got closer to it. The mists set a cascade of rainbows that shimmered over the orange cliff faces.
The trail rose, climbing the slopes to guide them to the tops of the cliffs. Anuit looked back down over the lake as they stood beside the top of the waterfall. The river flowed from the mountains to the south, but to the east, across many more miles of sand dunes, she could see the distant muddy green of swampland.
Kaldor pointed to it. “Sublai Swamp,” he said. “Home to the troll people of the Sublai.”
“Is that your home?” Arda asked Oriand.
“No,” Oriand said. “I did not know there was a cloister here.”
“That is not our destination,” Kaldor said. “Our journey ends in the sands before we reach it. Come. Let us go.”
They followed the river a few more miles south. It grew narrow as they went, the water rushing rapidly over mountain rocks. Finally, they came to a point in the trail where a rope bridge with wooden planks crossed from shore to shore.
“We’re not getting across that with the camel,” Anuit remarked.
“Let’s grab what we need,” Arda said and reached for the saddlebags.
“Wait!” Kaldor chuckled. “There must be some advantage to me being a wizard. I think I know just the spell.”
The wizard withdrew his wand from beneath his robe. He pointed to the other side of the bridge and uttered a few words.
“Gather close,” he said. The three women closed in around him with the camel.
Then suddenly, they stood on the opposite bank, across the river.
“There,” he said. “See. No need for the bridge after all.”
“If you can travel this way,” Oriand exclaimed, “then why not bring us to the vault? Why waste time walking?”
“If I could do that, don’t you think I would?” Kaldor snapped.
Oriand looked taken aback.
“I’m sorry,” Kaldor immediately apologized. “Magic isn’t easy. I get frustrated at my limits now, compared to the power I used to wield. This was a short distance, and I could see where I wanted us to be. I’ve never been to Valkrage’s Vault before. To translocate over long distances, you need to have set an anchor point first at your destination.”
“Oh. I’m sorry I offended,” Oriand replied.
Kaldor waved his hand. “No, the fault is mine. I shouldn’t have snapped. It was a fair question. I’m starting to feel my age, and it’s moments like these that remind me of what I lost.”
Anuit considered his words. She hadn’t thought of that before, not really. She had listened to his story, caught up in what he had experienced. The older man seemed kind, confident in himself, and generally happy. She had never thought about the personal cost of losing who he had been compared to who he was now. Still, he was a master wizard. He had power. Most people in the world had nothing.
Anuit sneered. “So you’ve fallen from godlike to be merely mighty.” She heard her demons chuckle in the periphery of her mind. “Never having had even what you have now, I can’t see whining about your loss.”
“Anuit!” Arda exclaimed. Her brow furrowed in disappointment.
Kaldor regarded her thoughtfully.
Anuit’s eyes widened in surprise at her own words. She felt all their eyes on her. She crossed her arms over her chest. “Let’s just go,” she said sullenly.
They left the green grasses and sparse trees behind, traveling away from the river, and journeyed two days east into the sand dunes, always within sight of the rising mountains to the south. As if to spite the winter months, the sun still beat down on them. Anuit was glad it was not summer, for she still sweat under its gaze. The snow-capped mountain peaks in the distance seemed a personal mockery. The sand grew soft the farther they walked, and each mile grew more difficult. Only Arda seemed unfazed by the physical exertion.
Anuit realized that in the time she had been traveling with Arda, she had summoned her demons much less than she used to. She had little need to manipulate and seduce as she had in the past nine years, and Arda’s companionship preempted the temptation of summoning Bryona or Belham for the sake of conversation.
She felt Khiighun’s essence in the piece of her soul that his death had returned to her. She wondered if her dark powers came from more than just Belham’s necromancy. She was beginning to suspect that such a thing had been possible for him to unlock only because Thoknos, her void-knight, had been slain on the bridge between Windbowl and the edge of the Artalonian Empire, so long ago. Under her sleeves, she shifted her hands back and forth, extending demonic claws and retracting them to become human fingers once more. It was easy to bring about the transformation. She wondered if she could become a shadow herself, as Thoknos had been.
Best not think too hard on it now, Belham’s presence whispered in her mind. Best not accidentally reveal your nature to your companions. They barely accept that you summon demons—they would turn against you if they knew you were becoming one.
It was noon on the third day when the sand grew thin over a hard rock surface. Wind scattered granules across yellow sandstone, and they blinked and turned their hoods low to keep grit from their eyes. Arda held her hand over her brow. “What I wouldn’t give for some
gnomish goggles,” Anuit heard her mutter.
Kaldor stopped. “I think… I think we’re here. Yes, this is definitely it.”
Anuit looked around. She saw the desert stretch to the horizon in all directions, arrested only by the mountains to the south. Nothing was different.
The other two looked at him expectantly.
“What aren’t we seeing?” Arda asked.
Kaldor looked around. “I don’t know yet. Let’s stop here… have some food…” He too looked confused. He started walking around in circles, glancing left and right.
Arda handed Anuit some dried apricots and a handful of nuts. She took them from the paladin along with a swallow from the water skin. She handed the water back, and then impulsively clasped her hands around Arda’s. Arda’s face lit up for a moment in surprise. Anuit opened her mouth to say something, but then realized she had nothing to say. She released Arda’s hand and blushed, dropping her eyes. Arda grinned but said nothing, walking away to pass the water to Oriand. She glanced back over her shoulder at Anuit.
“Here it is!” Kaldor exclaimed. He dropped to his knees and brushed sand away from the stone. They gathered around to see what he had uncovered. A series of concentric circles, neatly cut into the rock’s surface, surrounded what looked to be a small brass gear.
“Move the camel away and cover your faces,” Kaldor told them. He stood and raised his wand. They hurried away and shielded themselves in their robes. Absent a proper cloak and hood, Arda covered her face in the expanse of Anuit’s robe.
A whirling of wind descended from the blue sky, stirring up stand and dust around them. Anuit and Arda huddled together on their knees, pressing their faces into their scarves and her robe. The wind whipped at them fiercely, and then died down. When the air cleared once more, she stood. Arda lingered in her arms for a moment, and then turned away to the task at hand.
They stood upon barren rock, but it was obvious now it was no natural formation. It was constructed and carved of interlocking pieces. The circular patterns expanded twenty feet from them on all sides. She could see the edges of the structure curve down and recede beneath the sands. She knelt down and touched the stone. No, not stone. Something else entirely. “Metal?” she asked.
Kaldor shook his head. “Something between metal and stone. I’m not sure. No matter how long one lives, there are always new wonders…”
He pondered the patterns. Anuit could see no reason in the design, but he was a wizard. If nothing else, his mastery of spellcraft proved him a superior intellect.
Sure enough, a few minutes later, he muttered, “Yes, yes I see it. There it is.” He turned to Oriand. “Bring the camel to the sand’s edge. The rest of you, gather with me in the center.”
They followed his lead, coming to the middle of the smooth surface.
“It is gnomish design,” Kaldor remarked. He pointed his wand at the center. The wand’s tip sparked, dropping a dusty light onto the brass gear, which turned a quarter twist. Metal clanged and rumbled beneath them, casting echoes into the hollows beneath the surface. The ground shuddered, and then all the rings began twisting, alternating clockwise and counterclockwise, each at a different speed. The round surface around them descended into the depths, leaving them alone on a circular pedestal in the middle of a round chasm. A narrow staircase wrapped around the central column upon which they stood rose in a spiral to meet them.
“Interesting,” Kaldor said. “Too far to jump. You cannot leave without a wizard, or by first closing it. But for that, you still need a wizard.” He turned to the troll. “Is your mind clear?” he asked.
“I am clear,” she replied softly. “I have touched no rune nor uttered a prayer since Surafel.”
“I know not what is down there,” the black-skinned wizard said. “You might be tempted to call upon your runes, or call out to your goddess. You must not. You must trust to the power of the three of us.”
Oriand took a deep breath. “I understand.”
Runes? Was she a priestess? Anuit wanted to ask the troll about her past, but knew such inquiry would be unwelcome, and now wasn’t the right time in any case.
Kaldor nodded. He rubbed the white stubble that had grown on his cheeks and salted his dark face, then turned, waiting no more. He began his descent on the narrow stair steps, spiraling down into the dark depths. Arda followed, then Anuit, and Oriand last.
The stairs descended five hundred feet into the earth. Kaldor let his wand shine with a faint glow so he and Oriand could see. Anuit saw the silhouette of Arda’s horns in front of her.
She wrinkled her nose. “It smells like… sewage,” she whispered. “Is that of gnomish design, too?”
“Indeed not,” Kaldor answered softly. “There is something else down here.”
The stairs ended and they finally came to the bore’s floor. When Oriand stepped off the bottom stair, the sound of turning gears tumbled about in echoes, and the stairs and central column ascended away from the ground as the uppermost ceiling closed again, sealing them inside.
“Interesting,” Kaldor repeated his earlier sentiment. “This isn’t designed to keep people out. It’s designed to trap the people who discover it, if they are the wrong people.”
“It’s good we’re the right people,” Arda said. “Or you are, at any rate.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Indeed. Let’s hope.”
A smooth tunnel made of the same metallic, polished stone led away to the north. The tunnel was a perfectly round tube, large enough to accommodate the four of them walking side by side. Kaldor’s boots echoed down the path.
“Look,” Kaldor said. “Be on your guard.” The light of his wand revealed other tunnels, uneven and unnatural, which had been bored into the sides of the tube. “The tunnels are old, but the smell is fresh.”
“Troglodytes,” Arda said. “I’ve smelled this scent before.”
“Yes,” Kaldor confirmed. “The ancient worshippers of the Black Dragon.”
Arda touched her fingers to the pistols on her hips. Her hat lay on her back, held by its leather thong across her neck. The duster was still locked up above in the camel’s saddlebags. Anuit briefly noted and appreciated, in a somewhat fleeting yet distracting thought, how the black leather armor hugged Arda’s form.
“I have no weapons, nor knowledge of their use,” Oriand stated. She turned to Kaldor. “You’ve forbidden me the only power I once had.”
“I’m sorry,” Kaldor said. “It is imperative. Stay close.”
“It is not pleasant for me to be at the mercy of a man’s power,” she replied as she moved closer to the wizard.
“We are neither men nor women here,” the wizard responded. “We are simply companions in the search for truth. Come. Let’s continue.”
They walked through the tube and passed the openings of many side passages, but nothing intruded to challenge their way— other than the stench assaulting their noses. The tube took them several miles before the passage came to an end. A round metal door hatch lay sealed in front of them. Anuit thought it would pose a problem until Kaldor stepped forward and laid his hand on it. The door responded to his touch and rolled out of the way, sliding down inside the floor.
The entryway opened into a large spherical room. Its walls were constructed of interlocking metal plates of various shapes. Anuit suspected that they too would move if some mechanism were tripped. Soft garnets glowed, spilling red light throughout the chamber, at nodes and junctions amid the carved patterns.
The three women stood in the entryway. Anuit’s suspicions proved correct as soon as Kaldor stepped inside. The spherical walls whirled and twisted, creating a low hum as they moved. She caught glimpses of intricate gear-work behind the panels as the room reconfigured itself. A narrow dais of thick disks extended in the center of the room, raising up a jewel encrusted egg, four feet in height. It glittered in the blood red light, its own sapphires turned purple in the ambient hue from the wall’s garnets.
“Athra’s Jewel,” K
aldor said. The wizard took a step forward.
“Wait!” Anuit warned. She heard slithering in the darkness. The red light prevented her from reaching out with her senses to feel the shadow, but nevertheless, something was there.
From behind them, a javelin flew and hit Arda in the back, knocking the paladin to the ground.
“Arda!” Anuit shouted. She turned.
Four troglodytes crept through the tunnels towards them. They had leathery skin and reptilian heads. Their iron-thick jaws were toothed and as powerful as snapping turtles’, and their tiny eyes shown with crocodilian malevolence. They had long, thick tails, ridged like an alligator’s. They wore little armor, trusting to their leathery hides, but they grasped shields and small one-handed weapons that ranged from short swords to flails. Their armor, shields, and weapons were a strange color, not made of metal, but looked as if they were grown and hewed from the chitin of a large, iridescent beetle.
They rushed forward, faster than lizardmen, and then they were amid the companions.
“Into the chamber!” Kaldor shouted. His wand flared to life, and a troglodyte crumbled at Oriand’s feet. “No prayers!” he shouted at her as she ran into the spherical room. “To the egg!”
Arda struggled to her feet. The spear had not pierced her armor—Anuit silently thanked whoever designed such wondrous material—but she was stunned. Arda shook her head back and forth in a daze as she struggled to recover her senses.
Three troglodytes were suddenly on the paladin, as if drawn to her weakness.
“No!” Anuit shouted again. She opened herself up to the darkness, not even bothering to summon her demons.
She tapped into the dead souls of the caves—maybe these were troglodyte souls or the remnants of prior adventurers foolish enough to try to penetrate Valkrage’s Vault—and drew in dark energy. Shadows surged in from the seams in the spherical wall, penetrating the red glow. Her hands erupted with claws, and leathery skin covered her arms in demonic sleeves. She leaped forward, at the same time sending a surge of solid shadow to knock the three troglodytes away. Her mouth opened impossibly wide, lined with endless rows of teeth, and she bit and tore open the throat of one of the creatures.
When Dragons Die- The Complete Trilogy Box Set Page 67
