The Dark Warden (Book 6)

by Jonathan Moeller

  “The aisles!” shouted Ridmark as he split the skull of another undead. “Defend the aisles between the plinths. Calliande and Morigna, get in the center. Go!”

  The others cut their way free and moved into position. Ridmark, Caius, Kharlacht, Gavin, Arandar, and Mara and Jager together could each block one of the aisles. Calliande and Morigna stood in the center, Calliande’s face tight with concentration as she maintained the spell upon the weapons and flung the occasional blast of white flame. Morigna worked a spell of her own, and Ridmark expected the ground to ripple and fold, flinging the undead from their feet. Instead the stone became spongy and soft, and the undead started to sink into it. The altered stone slowed their advance, and Ridmark found it easy to strike down one, two, three of the creatures at once.

  Yet more took their place.

  Arandar cut through the undead like a storm, Heartwarden a torch of white flame in his fist. Whenever the sword cut through one of the creatures, the undead simply fell apart. Arandar shouted a battle cry and began to push forward, his battered shield leading.

  “Hold!” shouted Ridmark, ducking under the swing of a sword and striking with his axe. “Hold! Wait for the undead come to you! Don’t let them surround you.” Even a Swordbearer would fall if the undead surrounded him.

  Arandar nodded and fell back a few paces. Again Morigna cast her spell, and the stone tiles beneath the undead became spongy. Ridmark hacked and slashed with his axe, the dwarven blade hammering through undead flesh and bone. It reminded him absurdly of chopping wood. Again and again he swung, and soon a ring of corpses surrounded Calliande and Morigna, held back by spell-enhanced steel.

  And still the undead came. Ridmark hacked and swung and dodged, sweat dripping down his face, his arms aching with the effort. The Warden likely had an unlimited supply of the undead corpses. Perhaps he would not even notice the new corpses in his collection until he happened to come down here and find the bodies.

  Ridmark took the head from another undead, raised his axe, and looked for another foe.

  But there were none left.

  Surprised, he blinked. A ring of orcish corpses encircled them, the blue fire gone from their veins and eyes. Nothing else moved in the vast hall, and all the plinths were empty.

  “We…we destroyed them all?” said Gavin, astonished. He had taken a cut on his jaw and another on his sword arm, but was otherwise unhurt.

  “It would appear so,” said Kharlacht, lowering his sword.

  Arandar snorted as Heartwarden’s fire dimmed, easing Ridmark’s incessant headache. “Perhaps the Warden is not as formidable as he seems. Maybe there are no more undead to throw at us.”

  “No,” said Ridmark. “The Devout have buried their dead here for thousands of years. This is just the beginning.” He shook his head. “We shall face worse things yet.”

  Calliande and Arandar healed their wounds, and they pressed deeper into the catacombs of Urd Morlemoch.

  Chapter 11 - Mechanisms

  Utter silence reigned in Urd Morlemoch’s vaults.

  Ridmark led the way through the corridor, his staff and his axe in hand. Kharlacht trailed on his left and Caius on his right. Arandar and Gavin brought up the back, shielding Calliande and Morigna. Arandar had wished to walk in front, ready to bring Heartwarden to bear against any foes, but Ridmark wanted him in place to guard the women. Heartwarden was a powerful weapon, but so were Calliande’s magic and Morigna’s spells. The cleverer creatures of the dark elves, the urshanes and the urhaalgars and the urdhracosi, would know enough to attack Calliande and Morigna first.

  Without their magic, the battle against the undead would have gone very differently.

  Mara and Jager flanked Calliande and Morigna, blades in hand. The two of them moved with a silence that was almost uncanny. Even an urhaalgar would have been hard-pressed to move with equal quiet.

  Their quiet was matched only by the funereal silence of Urd Morlemoch itself. They moved through high corridors of stone, the crimson crystals overhead throwing a pale illumination. From time to time they passed through wide galleries, some even larger than the chamber of the undead. Often bones and rusting weapons littered the floors of those chambers, and Ridmark watched for more undead creatures. Yet they encountered no other creatures, living or dead, in the catacombs of Urd Morlemoch.

  “Where are we going?” said Arandar.

  “Up,” said Ridmark.

  “You don’t know?” said Arandar.

  “Not that the moment, no,” said Ridmark. “The layout of the catacombs has changed since my last visit.” He glanced at Jager. “Evidently the Warden did not limit his redecorating to simply the outer chambers.”

  “How thoughtful of him to consider his guests,” said Jager.

  “Then we could wander these galleries until we die of thirst?” said Arandar.

  “It is possible,” said Ridmark. Arandar scowled at that. “But we have ample water with us, and we know how to find our way back. Unless the Warden’s power extends to rearranging the maze with us inside of it.”

  “I doubt it,” said Caius. “To rearrange the interior of Urd Morlemoch so thoroughly without destroying the hill was a staggering feat of engineering. If he used magic to accomplish it, certainly Calliande and Mara would sense it first.”

  “We keep going up,” said Ridmark, pointing. The corridor ended in a broad staircase that rose higher into the hill, the crimson light gleaming off the steps. “Eventually we will find an entrance that leads to the surface. From there we make our way to the Warden’s tower.”

  “We must also find Truthseeker,” said Arandar. “It could be anywhere in this maze.”

  “Likely it is somewhere within the Warden’s tower,” said Ridmark. “A soulblade is a weapon of such surpassing power that I doubt the Warden would let it lie where Judicaeus Carhaine was slain.”

  “If you say so,” said Arandar, his doubt plain.

  “Fear not, sir knight,” said Calliande. “I shall be able to sense the weapon as we draw near to it.”

  “Or we shall simply challenge the Warden for it,” said Ridmark.

  They reached the top of the stairs, and Ridmark froze.

  He did not like the gallery that awaited them.

  It was a long, high gallery of white stone, red crystals gleaming in the apex of the arches high overhead, little different than the others they had already seen. Yet the subtle differences nagged at Ridmark. A raised walkway of stone, about three or four feet higher than the rest of the gallery, led from the top of the stairs to the archway at the far wall. The walkway and the recessed floor looked peculiarly shiny, as if they had been cleaned often. Even stranger, the walls bore hundreds of tiny black holes, each one no larger than Ridmark’s thumb. He looked up and saw a single small balcony near the vaulted ceiling, ringed in an ornate railing of blue dark elven steel.

  As if the Warden could stand there and watch whatever went on in this chamber.

  “What are you looking for?” said Jager at last.

  “Metal plates,” said Ridmark. “Anything that could conceal a machine. I think this room is a large mechanical trap.”

  “Like the chamber of blades in Urd Dagaash,” said Gavin.

  “Or the flood chamber in Thainkul Dural,” said Morigna.

  “Do not remind me,” said Calliande. “We were nearly killed in both places.”

  In Thainkul Dural Ridmark had carried Morigna as she bent her will upon the dvargirs’ pet mzrokar, holding the monstrous animal in place until they could clear the flood trap. He remembered how she had felt in his arms as she strained to hold her spell in place, which made him think of how she had felt lying in his arms, her breath and body hot against his…

  It was not surprising that he would think about that now, given that this room likely held death.

  “I do not see anything that looks likely,” said Jager. “No plates of either dvargirish or dwarven steel.”

  “Caius,” said Ridmark. “Your kindred are more famili
ar with mechanical contrivances.”

  “This resembles no trap of the dwarven kindred,” said Caius. “At least none that I have seen with my own eyes. And I have seen no traps like this in any of the dark elven ruins it has been my misfortune to visit.” He tapped the archway. “No hidden door. Nor a crack to conceal one.”

  Jager shrugged. “I suppose that entire stone slab could fall to seal off the chamber, though it is six feet thick.”

  “Mara?” said Ridmark. “Did the Traveler have anything like this?”

  Mara shook her head. “The Traveler lives almost entirely outdoors. He keeps his court in various stone circles scattered around Nightmane Forest. There are a few dark elven ruins among the trees, but he uses them to store his treasures. Certainly I never saw the inside of one.”

  “Perhaps the room simply isn’t trapped,” said Calliande.

  “Those holes could shoot poisoned darts,” said Gavin.

  “They’re too low,” said Jager. “The darts would bounce off the side of the walkway. A danger if you were foolish enough to stroll up to those holes and stick a finger inside, but I hope no one here is that foolish.”

  “This from the man who tried to steal from Tarrabus Carhaine,” murmured Morigna.

  Arandar gave the Master Thief of Cintarra an incredulous look.

  Jager shrugged. “To be fair, he really deserved it.”

  Ridmark tapped the end of his staff against the walkway. Some mechanical traps were triggered by mechanisms hidden beneath stone tiles, but the walkway was a single massive piece of stone. He put his weight upon the staff, but nothing happened. He took several strides upon the walkway, but still nothing happened. Ridmark crossed halfway into the room, his muscles tensed, but saw no sign of movement.

  At last he shrugged.

  “We may as well move on,” said Ridmark. “Be ready to run at the first sign of trouble.”

  “That would have been weeks ago,” said Jager. Ridmark paused, waiting for the others to catch up with him. Perhaps if there had been a trap here, the mechanism had broken down millennia ago, or the Warden had removed it.

  The walkway quivered beneath his boots, and a click reverberated through the gallery.

  The realization flashed through Ridmark’s mind. Usually the dark elves hid the triggers for their traps beneath stone tiles. The walkway was one solid piece of stone, which meant in essence it was one large tile. His weight had not been enough to trigger the trap, but when his companions strode onto the walkway…

  He spun just in time to see a slab of stone seal off the way back, landing with a thunderous crash. Ridmark whirled towards the exit on the far end of the gallery just as it vanished beneath a similar slab of stone.

  The echoes lasted a long time before they faded away.

  “Fool, fool, fool,” said Ridmark. “My weight wasn’t enough. It took all of us to set it off. If I had sent us across one at a time, that would have let us pass unharmed.”

  “A more pressing concern,” said Caius. “How shall we escape?”

  “I have no spells to open the door,” said Calliande.

  “I might,” said Morigna. “This white stone of the dark elves is most easy to manipulate with earth magic. I think I can command the doors to dissolve into sand.”

  “Truly?” said Calliande.

  “It will take a few hours,” said Morigna, “but I believe it can be done. You shall have to be patient, though.”

  “I suppose we are in no danger of encountering any foes here,” said Kharlacht.

  “Not until Morigna opens the door,” said Ridmark. “The sound will have drawn creatures from the rest of the catacombs. We may have to be ready to fight.” He thought he heard a faint murmuring whisper. Perhaps a side effect of his headache. “It…”

  “Water!” said Gavin. “Water is coming out of the holes!”

  Ridmark followed the boy’s pointing finger and saw water flowing from the holes. It was just a trickle, but already the flow was increasing. The white stone floor foamed and bubbled wherever the water touched it, releasing a strange, sharp odor…

  “Then we are to be drowned?” said Jager. “A cruel trap.”

  “Oh,” said Caius. “That’s not water.”

  “What is it, then?” said Ridmark, though he already knew the answer.

  “Vitriol,” said Caius. “Acid.”

  “I fear we might wish we had been drowned,” said Kharlacht.

  Ridmark turned in a circle, watching the small holes. Every single one of them was leaking acid, and widening puddles of the stuff were spreading across the recessed floor. Wisps of white smoke rose from the edge of the pools. Standing too close to the smoke made Ridmark lightheaded, and he kept well away from it.

  “We shall likely be asphyxiated first,” said Mara, waving a hand in front of her face.

  “The door,” said Ridmark, pointing at the sealed slab of stone on the far end of the chamber. “Quickly!”

  They rushed to the massive slab of stone, and Ridmark’s heart sank. The damned thing had to weigh at least two or three tons. Arandar touched Heartwarden’s hilt and drew on the sword’s power to fill him with strength, and Calliande cast a spell. White light flickered around them, and Ridmark felt stronger as her magic augmented his natural strength. They gathered around the stone, heaving and pulling, but it did not move a single inch.

  “Morigna,” said Ridmark, “your spell.”

  She stepped forward, purple fire flaring around her fingers. An inch of acid now covered the floor, foaming and smoking where it touched the wall. Mara was right. The toxic smoke rising from the acid would asphyxiate them long before the acid covered the walkway.

  Morigna placed her free hand upon the stone door, eyes closed tight in concentration. For a moment nothing happened, and then a steady trickle of white sand fell from the door, her palm sinking into the stone. Her magic was working, unbinding the stone and collapsing it into sand.

  But it was not doing it quickly, and Ridmark suspected the acid would overflow the walkway long before Morigna’s hand got more than three or four inches into the door. For that matter, the fumes would likely kill them first.

  “I suggest you move faster,” said Arandar.

  “I am trying,” snapped Morigna, eyes darting back and forth behind closed lids. “I make this look easy, but I can assure you that it most certainly is not.”

  “Don’t disturb her,” said Ridmark, stepping away from the door. Nearly three inches of acid covered the recessed floor now. That explained why the gallery had been so clean, the stone of the walls and floor smoother than usual for dark elven architecture. Though the peculiar smoothness only extended six or seven feet above the walkway. The trap must have some mechanism to drain off the acid. The walls and stairs below had shown no signs of damage. There had to be a hidden drain somewhere within the room. For that matter, there was likely a means of disarming the trap entirely. The room of blades in Urd Dagaash had been disarmed with a simple lever located on the other side of the trap. Ridmark had almost been crushed to death by another mechanism during his last visit to Urd Morlemoch, and he had escaped that trap by smashing its machinery with an axe.

  More sand fell from the door. Morigna’s hand had sunk maybe an inch into the stone, while the acid had risen another two inches.

  “Again!” said Arandar, and they tried to lift the door. It did not even tremble.

  Ridmark looked for a drain or some sort of mechanism. It would have to be above the level of the acid. Too low and the vitriolic fluid would eat away the metal. His head swam with the fumes rising from the dissolving stone. Where would the dark elves had hidden it?

  His eyes fell upon the small balcony high overhead. For the first time he looked at the intricate metal framework of the railing, and saw a metal rod rising beyond the scrollwork.

  A lever.

  “Stop!” said Ridmark. “Look. I suspect that is the release lever.”

  “We pull on it and the trap releases?” said Gavin. “Just
like that?”

  “It worked in Urd Dagaash,” said Ridmark.

  “Well and good,” said Arandar. “But we have no hope of reaching the lever.”

  A foot of acid now sloshed and rippled below the walkway. The air was taking on an acrid reek, and Ridmark was finding it increasingly difficult to draw breath. He did not know how much longer they had until the foul air overwhelmed them, but he suspected it would not be much longer.

  “Can either of you reach it with your spells?” said Ridmark.

  Calliande shook her head.

  “If it was closer,” said Morigna.

  “Ridmark,” said Mara. “I could…”

  “Not yet,” said Ridmark. It was entirely possible that the Warden was watching them. If he was, Ridmark did not want to reveal Mara’s unique abilities. Those abilities might be their only advantage against the Warden. But if it was a choice between revealing them and choking to death…

  “Oh, ye of little faith,” said Jager, his voice cheerful. “No faith in me at all! I am deeply wounded.”

  “This is not the time for jokes, little man,” said Morigna.

  “Really?” said Jager, holding something up. “I was merely trying to lighten the mood before I save our lives in a dramatic fashion.”

  A coiled rope and a collapsible steel grapnel rested in his hands.

  “You think you can make the climb?” said Ridmark.

  “Of course I can,” said Jager, opening the grapnel. “Give me some room, please.” They backed away, and Jager whirled the grapnel over his head. “Not only was I a thief, Gray Knight, I was a very good thief. Exceptionally good.”

  “Until you got caught,” said Morigna.

  Jager ignored that. “And one of the keys of competent thieving is to be good at climbing things.”

  He flung the grapnel, the rope arcing over the pool of acid. The grapnel hit the intricate railing and stuck fast. Jager tugged the rope several times, leaned on it with his full weight, but the grapnel remained in place.