The rug merchant was shocked when they walked in. His eyes moved back and forth as if searching for something beyond them when Hokra realized what he was missing.
“If you are looking for Alabast, rest easy for he is in Herewist and he stands proudly upon your rug, which occupies a prize place in the apartments of Karjan.”
Hokra’s approach worked well on the stubby merchant and he smiled widely, thinking no doubt, that the patronage of one such as Karjan might mean great things for him.
“Will you sit and drink with me?” The extra chins of Abulet’s face fairly shook at the prospect of hosting those who had walked his basement rug and returned.
Abulet walked quickly to a back room, his thin feet and legs rolling smoothly to compensate for the ballast around his middle. Had he needed to breathe, Lydria was sure he would be red-faced with exertion from even such a modest movement. He carried a small table with him when he returned and placed it in the center of a rug upon which was sewn a great tower. Of all his works, the tower in this rug showed black. The base of the tower was a deep black, even against the greys of the rest of the composition. There were no figures weaved into it, merely the tower, with several tall, thin windows at irregular intervals winding around and up the building.
Motioning for them to sit, Abulet moved behind his counter and came rattling back with a tray holding five delicate glass cups, each about a hand’s length high. In the center sat a stone vessel with a long, pointed spout from which he poured a green liquid that steamed and turned the dead air around them into a small garden of smells for the briefest of instants.
“Do you like that?” Abulet smiled when he saw the glimmer of recognition in their eyes. The smell was captivating and made Lydria aware of how little odor there was in all the Nethyn Plains. Hokra inhaled deeply, as if trying to cleanse his nose of something rather less pleasant, and Haustis waved the steam toward her face as if the smell could wash the greyness from her. Dravud did not sit, but stood behind Lydria and Haustis, his arms crossed over his chest. His armor, Lydria thought, had turned a darker shade of green, and it felt as though heat emanated from him. Perhaps it was a trick of the room, the rugs, or the steam from the drink, but she was sure Dravud’s form was shifting subtly once again. Slightly larger, and his jaw more pronounced, as if he had lost weight or gained muscle. The latter, she observed, was certainly true.
“You made it across the rug … and back!” Tell me everything? Abulet sipped at his cup, his large lips pulling away from the glass, moist with the drink, and his eyes staring at Hokra, willing him to answer the question, and then finally turning to the others, realizing their expressions had questions of their own. “It’s tea,” he said. “Agubend has certain…resources, that allow for some things from our former lives. I assure you, it’s quite safe and very good. Of course, whatever makes this place, this place, well it sucks all the color and flavor and smell away quickly. But if you’re fast, you get a little idea of what it was like.”
Looking into her glass, Lydria saw the man was correct. The green liquid turned to a dull grey before her eyes, and as the steam stopped flowing from the glass, the wonderful odor of mint went with it, leaving the room once again a sense-less place.
Abulet lowered his eyes as if apology. “You are the first to ever step across the rug and come back. Tell me, what’s it like?”
The man’s tone took Lydria by surprise – he was genuinely interested, but she tried to turn the conversation away from Hokra’s adventure by asking questions of her own to which she was similarly interested. “How did the rug come to be here? Who made it?”
The smile that reached across Abulet’s face made him seem years younger. With no small amount of pride, he sipped his drink once again and nearly giggled as he said, “I did. In another world I was a builder. No, not a builder. A creator. The great spires and keep of Sundrughan are of my design. Have you seen it?” He looked crestfallen when no one could admit to having heard of either the building or the kingdom before.
“That’s a pity. It was glorious. Vaulted ceilings that would cover the trees, spires that looked like they were twisted into shape, ballrooms, and apartments you would never want to leave. And, if I may speak so boldly, the very best parts of Sundrughan are likely lost forever. Secret passages and rooms that would outfit a considerable force.” Abulet leaned his considerable frame forward on the table and spent a long time telling them about individual rooms, traps, hidden levers and staircases. My cleverness was rewarded with power and station while the work went on,” he said, his face sliding into sadness. “When my work was finished…” Abulet let the phrase hang and the others nodded slowly, understanding his silence and what the king did to keep the secrets of his palace safe.
Abulet’s cheeks puffed out and he picked up again as if he had never stopped. “The king used my inventions for his cruel purposes, but he never found the one secret I kept from him – secret entrances to the rooms of all the royal family, though my specific interest was in the passage to the chamber of his wife, and another to his daughter.”
Abulet smiled and took another sip of tea to let what he had said sink in, and when he believed his guests had understood his intention, he spoke again. “Believe it or not, I was handsome once. Desired by women far and wide, and by a fair few men as well.” He winked at Hokra who smiled politely.
Seeing his audience fading, he finished his story quickly. “When I ended up here, I was asked to help build an entrance to another kingdom, a very lonely, desolate kingdom that cannot be found by any of the paths from the beach. Even Griffis is unaware of it. Hoping I wouldn’t be killed again and sent back to the beach when my work was done, I told Alabast, the one who commissioned the gateway, for materials from the world above. In this way I have spent many ages weaving my gems between this kingdom and that. I was concerned, I don’t mind telling you, that I thought perhaps it didn’t work. No one ever came back. Alabast never told me anything about the other side, so I’m curious…”
Hokra sighed heavily and drank the remainder of his tea. It was cold and tasteless as the dregs passed his throat, but he looked as if it had strengthened his resolve as well as any liquor.
“First, Master Abulet, let me say that your work with the gem bridge is a thing of beauty, and flawless in both its design and construction. That no one ever came back was certainly no fault of your craftsmanship, but rather the horror that lived in that place, eating those who came across your fabulous rug, and holding them in an eternity of pain and suffering unlike anything you have ever witnessed.” The man seemed pleased and nodded in appreciation of the respect given to his craftsmanship.
Hokra described Truna the creature, and the howls of those who cried out from its maw. He said nothing of Truna the child, nor of the smaller bridge that guarded the ring. That bridge was not the work of Abulet he was certain.
“If I could ask a boon of you, good Abulet, I would ask that you take apart that which you have so precisely put together. If ever again anything wanders to the other side of your gate, then it should stay there, and it should remain alone and not be bothered by the likes of us.” Hokra looked into his cup and said no more about that place.
For his part, Abulet was not unmoved by Hokra’s accounting, and somewhat nervously agreed to do as the Chag Ca’Grae had asked. “I would like to give you something before you leave. I know you must be on your way – I can see how Dravud twitches with anticipation to be on the road again. If you are here, there can be only one destination for you – the Halls of Wilmamen.”
At the name, the three looked up with renewed interest in what the man might have to say. “Wilmamen used to come see me a long time ago. She came often with a young friend of hers, a lovely girl who had no more place in the Nethyn Plains than do the gems in my rug, and yet here they both are. By whose will or devious manipulation, I do not know, but a long time ago – or so it seems – Wilmamen stopped coming to see me and I’ve heard that she does not treat well those who mention
the name of Alabast the white guide. So, if you find her, do not mention his name.”
Those around the table sat in silence, their nods all the thanks Abulet would get for his information. “There is one more thing.” He got up and went to his desk and took from behind it a small box. “When Alabast brought the gems to me to create the gate, I held some of them back, and I made this.” He held out an overly large bracelet with a ruby the size of Hokra’s thumb. “I have seen your light; would you shine it here?” Abulet directed the globes of blue light to the back of the gem, its surface perfectly flat and mated to a precisely crafted gold setting. The piece was obviously too large for a wrist and Abulet explained that in his country when he was a boy, it was the fashion of the time for men to wear such finery on their upper arms, just above the bicep. As sleeves became more prominent, men stopped wearing the jewelry altogether, although he said they could likely still be found amongst those who rarely wore shirts – those in the arena, the priests of Raalcas and in the pleasure houses on the arms of both women and men.
Hokra motioned a globe of blue light into being earning an appreciative look from Abulet, and the dead man motioned the light behind the armlet and was satisfied by the light gasps and looks of incredulous admiration from his guests as the gem reflected into segments on the wall and ceiling of the shop.
“This is a map of Sundrughan, and its secret ways – including those chambers I mentioned. It is all I have that you might take with you when you leave this place. Perhaps, if you can find Sundrughan, you can avenge me by taking my bones back to be buried in the sands of Dar’Ahlmon. If I am correct, they will be here, in the bone shacks, near the deepest dungeon where those who are tortured for their crimes are left to rot.”
For a moment no one moved, unsure of whom Abulet meant to have the gift. Finally, he handed it to Hokra. “You have given me a great gift, by your description of my work and the knowledge that it was not faulty, and I hope you will take this in return.”
Abulet caught each of their eyes briefly before heading to the curtain of rugs against the wall and walking through the door behind them to pass into the cellar. He spared a moment and waved a pudgy hand at the newcomers and wished them well.
“Come, we have to go through the heart of the city to find Wilmamen. Unlike Rax and Karjan, she does not sit idly by and wait for the world to unfold around her.” Dravud held open the door to the shop and they made their way out to a street lit by many small fires and where people moved about from place to place and stood and conversed in small groups near empty shops much like Abulet’s.
In many respects Agubend was the closest they had come to a city in Eigrae. The streets were narrow, made of dry, packed dirt and the buildings that rose on either side made of stone, streaked with untold years of soot and smoke. The windows were nearly impossible to see through from the blanket of grime, and yet no one seemed to care enough to clean them.
The normalcy of the town quickly gave way to reality, however, as there was no noise beyond the low conversations going on around them. There were no animal sounds, no bells announcing visitors to shops, no cooking or baking, no smells of bread or stale beer; not even urine or less pleasant smells that typically ambushed travelers as they walked by alleys filled with trash on Eigrae. Here, however, there was no trash, no flies, or insects, no birds, cats, or dogs barking. There was nothing of life in the place. The sun did not shine, and the sky did not rain, it was an endless cycle of sameness.
Their passage down the streets drew only scant recognition. That they were different was unmistakable. Two wore collars that stood out starkly against the grey, and the smallest among them wore a red gem on his bicep held in place by a wide ring of gold and a cord of silver that attached the armlet to his shoulder. They were armed as well, and now traveled openly so, something that was uncommon in the town but by no means unique. Dravud had told them that the favored of the lieutenants sometimes carried weapons. Those who did, were usually given a wide berth. “Those who live here learn early that to have embraced their fate may have given them a place in Agubend, but there are still rules and enforcers of those rules. No one wishes to be sent back to the beach where they may make a worse choice that what brought them here.”
With no other distractions and without trying, their steps soon fell in line with each other, and they were marching as a single unit down the dirt streets, their heel strikes crashing into the silence around them. Lydria was so intent on the memory of her father the marching evoked, she didn’t immediately notice a new sound intruding into her reverie. It was water.
It was Haustis who first registered the difference and she moved off quickly from the others, her strides dispelling the rhythm of eight feet in harmony. When she came to the end of a street that opened into a paved square, the center of the town, or at least the center of this part of the town, she stopped and stared off to her right at something still blocked from Lydria’s view by a grey building.
Lydria picked up her pace to join her sister before the others arrived, turning the corner to see a small tower of water flowing up and spilling out to the sides. “Do you recognize it, Lydria?” Haustis asked, her voice flat and filled with apprehension.
“No, I cannot see it properly.”
“Perhaps this will help.” Haustis walked toward the water and was lost as she went to the other side. Hokra and Dravud arrived as Haustis moved out of view and suddenly, in a brief and brilliant burst of radiant yellow light, Lydria could make out the fountain. The base consisted of a large sphere of stone, into which twin blades of darkness were plunged. Water sprayed up from the breach to play upon the two enormous Farn’Nethyn blades which reached several feet over Haustis’ head. The dim light of Agubend could not escape the darkness of the blades, but the light from Haustis’ amulet silhouetted the outline clearly.
Hokra walked to the fountain and reached his hand toward the blade closest to him. “It is Farn’Nethyn, and yet, it is not. It is not alive.” Hokra’s collar shone as he stood next to the sphere, and he said quietly to Lydria, “your collar still shines as well. This stone poses no threat to us.”
“I know,” said a quiet, high pitched and uniquely feminine voice. “The fountain was easy to shape, and the lifeless stone offered no resistance – unlike the weapon it represents. So, as a fountain, it offers no joy, no wonder. No soul.” The wielder of the voice walked slowly around the fountain opposite Haustis and Hokra. She was tall and graceful, her skin faint against the fountain sword, and her ears hinged in the curious fashion of the Eifen. She wore a fitted shirt of dull grey chain that clearly outlined her curved form. Around her throat she wore a torque of equally grey metal, and on her hip a thin sword, of the same type of that in the fountain; like Relin’s sword, a single, narrow, blade gently curved along the spine – seemingly half of the weapon that bore her name.
“Hello Dravud. Are you going to introduce me?”
“Lydria, Haustis, Hokra, may I present to you the governess of Agubend, Mistress Wilmamen.”
17-Wilmamen
This, Lydria thought, was the Wilmamen of Relin’s stories. She was strong and exuded confidence, even here in this unnatural place. She was graceful and beautiful, everything Lydria knew she would never be. Her voice fell like flower petals in a spring field and she reached out to touch every one of them in greeting, her large yet somehow feminine hand gliding smoothly across their skin, raising goosebumps of flesh along Lydria’s arm. Alone of all the people and creatures she had met in the Nethyn Plains, Wilmamen felt warm.
“It has been a long time, Dravud.” She moved forward quickly and embraced the guide warmly, holding his neck in her long hands and pressing her lips against his ear. Lydria didn’t know if she said anything to him or not, but she saw Dravud smile briefly before responding.
“Has it? I can never be sure, but it seems that yes, it has probably been a very long time.” I guide these three to see Vul Griffis. They have returned Karjan’s ring to her possession.”
&
nbsp; Dravud said the last as though it conveyed some weight that he thought Wilmamen should take into consideration. The legendary Eifen was starting to speak over the guide when she registered what he had said and she paused, looking at the three travelers and turning again to Dravud, her eyebrows raised. The guide simply nodded.
“I see,” she said, taking a seat on a bench nearby the fountain which, Lydria noted, behaved like all the other water she had seen here. It bounced off the sphere but fell almost instantly still as it reached the bottom. Other than the splashing against the sword blades, there was barely a trickle of noise.
Dravud did not sit next to her but waited, standing over her, his arms folded across his green armor, which had moved down the top of his thighs even as he had grown even more, now standing well above Haustis.
Wilmamen shifted her gaze between the guide, Lydria and Hokra, finally settling on Haustis. Standing quickly Wilmamen walked to stand before her.
“You are Haustis?”
“I believe I am the last Haustis.”
“Of the east?”
“Of the east and west. From Eigrae the paths to the Melting Grae, have closed. The voices of the spirits no longer reach Eifynar in the east or Eigraenel in the West.”
Wilmamen’s eyes did not leave those of Haustis, and Lydria thought she might cry, but no tears fell from her eyes. She reached out and embraced Haustis, kissing her lightly on the cheek before holding her at arm’s length. “Then it is done, and my work was for naught.” She lowered her head and started to walk down the street, raising her arm and motioning with her hand that the others should follow her. She said nothing as they moved past people who walked by, often in pairs, and though some few greeted her, she remained silent, her thoughts unknown to those who had lived with her for time untold.
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