Chapter 5 - Masks
The tunnel ended in a corridor of worked white stone, more of the red crystals glowing in the ceiling. Ridmark moved forward. The corridor’s vaulted ceiling rose high overhead, crystals shining in the apex of the arches. Intricate reliefs of carved stone covered the walls, showing scenes of dark elven warriors and wizards leading their armies to victory over the high elves, or torturing and killing orcs and halflings and dwarves and lupivirii. The dark elves had grisly tastes in art, and the reliefs reveled in their power, showing the dark elven lords ruling over an empire of terrified, helpless slaves.
At least until the urdmordar had enslaved the dark elves in turn.
Ridmark thought of Gothalinzur, and wondered if the urdmordar made artwork celebrating their triumphs.
Though he suspected the urdmordar simply devoured their slaves without the pretense of artistic embellishment.
At least there were no bones on the floor here.
The corridor ended in another flight of spiral stairs. Ridmark ascended, his ears straining for any sounds. But the corridors were silent as a tomb.
Perhaps Urd Morlemoch was a tomb.
The stairs ended, and Ridmark found himself in a lofty hall of white stone, crimson light coming from more crystals in the ceiling. Twin balconies ran the length of the hall, and dusty wreckage covered the floor. He saw the pieces of a long-smashed wooden table, and quite a few bones. Some of the skulls had the thick tusks of orcs, while others were thinner and sharper, no doubt dark elves. Here and there Ridmark saw pieces of dark elven armor, the blue steel almost black in the red glow.
There had been fighting here, long ago.
A pair of double doors, built of dark wood and blue steel, stood half open at the far end of the hall. Ridmark saw another flight of stairs ascending beyond them. Stairs also climbed to each of the balconies, leading to further doors.
Where to go next?
Ridmark stopped for a moment to consider it. The archways on the balconies seemed to lead to further corridors, while the stairs climbed higher into the ruins. The stairs beyond the double doors seemed like the better choice. God knew what other horrors might wander these ruins, and the sooner he found Rhyannis, the better.
He wished he knew how Rhyannis had entered the ruins. Most likely she had used the secret tunnel, just as Ridmark had, and he had no doubt an elven bladeweaver could have defeated the urvaalgs. But where had she gone after that? She wanted to steal a book from the Warden’s library, Ardrhythain had said, and the Warden likely kept his library in the central tower.
That meant Ridmark had to go up.
He took a step forward, and saw a child staring at him.
A delicate latticework of white stone provided the railing for the left balcony, its swirling angles odd and alien, and the dirty face of a human child stared at Ridmark through one of the gaps. The girl looked no more than seven or eight, and wore only a ragged shift of rough cloth, her eyes bright and glittering in her emaciated face.
For a moment he was so surprised that he did not move. The child watched him with unblinking eyes. Her pale skin looked as if it had never seen the sun.
Had she spent her life down here? A slave to the mutated orcs, perhaps?
“Greetings,” said Ridmark in Latin. “I mean you no harm.”
The girl gave no response. If she had spent her life down here, perhaps she had never heard Latin.
“Greetings,” said Ridmark again, switching to orcish. “I intend you no ill.”
The girl pushed away from the railing and fled through one of the archways.
Ridmark hurried after her. The thought of ignoring her and continuing with his task never crossed his mind. He was a Knight of the Order of the Soulblade, sworn to defend the people of the realm from the powers of dark magic. And if that child had spent her life in this dark place, she needed defending more than most.
He climbed the stairs to the balcony and saw the child standing in the entrance to a corridor, still staring at him.
“I mean you no ill,” said Ridmark. Her eyes shifted to his sword, and he realized that perhaps he had frightened her. He slid Heartwarden into its scabbard and spread his hands. “If you are a captive here, I can take you away from this place.”
The girl ran down the corridor, her bare feet making no sound against the cold stone floor.
Ridmark started to run after her, and stopped himself.
Running blindly after her, without his sword, was a very bad idea. The girl might run into the lair of more creatures like the urvaalgs.
A darker thought occurred to him.
Perhaps she was acting as bait, gladly carrying out the will of her masters. Someone or something had been controlling those urvaalgs. Ridmark drew Heartwarden from its scabbard with a steely rasp, the soulstone flickering with pale white light. Dark magic was near – though Urd Morlemoch was saturated with it.
He strode down the corridor, sword ready.
The sound of splashing water filled his ears, and the corridor ended in a small hall dominated by a long rectangular pool. A statue of a nude dark elven woman rose from the water. Ridmark wondered how the dark elves had managed to pump water down here, and then decided that magic must have been involved.
There was no sign of the girl.
She couldn’t have vanished. Two archways stood on either end of the hall. Perhaps she had run into one of them. Ridmark examined the floor for a moment, saw no sign of a trail, and then picked the archway on the left.
“Ridmark!”
Ridmark whirled, facing the archway on the right, and his eyes widened in shock.
“Joram?” he said.
Sir Joram Agramore stood in the archway, stocky no more, his limbs gaunt and withered, his face covered with a bushy, gray-streaked beard. The man looked as if he had aged twenty years, all of them filled with torment. Yet Ridmark had only been gone from Castra Marcaine for six weeks! Surely Joram could not have wasted away in that time.
“Ridmark,” said Joram, his voice a low sob. “Help me, please, help me, they come for me, they torment me, Ridmark…”
Ridmark stepped forward, and Joram jerked backwards, vanishing into the archway.
As if something had pulled him back.
Ridmark hurried around the pool and through the archway. A gloomy corridor spread before him, and he turned the corner.
Joram huddled against the wall, clad only in rags, shivering.
“Ridmark,” said Joram. “It has been…it has been years…”
“That’s impossible,” said Ridmark. “I left the Northerland a month and a half ago.”
Joram cackled. “The dark magic of this place. It…it distorts time. Ridmark, you’ve been gone ten years.”
“No,” said Ridmark. “That’s not possible.”
“The Dux sent his best knights and Swordbearers to rescue you,” said Joram. “The demons of this place hunted us down one by one. Now I am all that is left.” He started to weep. “Why did you come here? Why didn’t you stay in Castra Marcaine? Aelia…oh, God, Aelia…”
“Aelia?” said Ridmark. “What happened to her? Joram, you’re not well. You…”
Joram screamed and sprinted further down the corridor.
Ridmark cursed and followed him. He saw Joram vanish around yet another corner, and Ridmark ran faster, hoping to catch him…
Then he stopped, forcing himself to think.
How the devil could Joram have gotten here? Ridmark had left six weeks ago, and only just arrived at Urd Morlemoch. Joram and the Dux’s rescue party would have had to have left immediately after.
Or perhaps, a dark voice in his mind whispered, perhaps Joram had told the truth, and the Warden’s black sorcery had distorted time. Perhaps he really had been wandering the dungeons of Urd Morlemoch for years while Joram and the others suffered.
That was absurd. Ridmark had never heard of magic that could do such a thing.
A scream rang out from the corridor ahead, and it cut through
Ridmark’s thoughts in a single burst of fear and horror.
Aelia. That was Aelia’s voice. He would know it anywhere.
Ridmark sprinted toward the scream, Heartwarden gleaming in his fist, the corridor stretching before him. The scream rang out again, shriller and sharper than before, filled with despair and agony. How had Aelia come to this terrible place? Even if the Dux had sent a rescue party after Ridmark, surely Aelia would not have accompanied them.
He turned one final corner and stopped, horror freezing his limbs.
The corridor ended in an oval-shaped chamber. More scenes of torture and conquest decorated the walls, the reliefs still sharp and clear after so many millennia. A stone column rose from the center of the room, chains dangling from its sides.
Aelia Licinius hung naked in those chains, her wrists in shackles, her head bowed.
He had dreamed about seeing her unclad, more than once, but this was an obscenity. Hunger had wasted her limbs to thin sticks, her ribs sharp against her skin. Streaks of white marked her brittle black hair, and her skin bore the signs of frequent torture, scabs and burns and bruises and half-healed gashes.
“No,” said Ridmark. “This isn’t…this isn’t…”
She twitched, groaning, and lifted her head. Her face looked like a skull sheathed in dry skin, and her green eyes glittered with madness and pain. Her lips twitched, her tongue rubbing against her teeth as she tried to speak.
“Ridmark,” she rasped. “No. This is…another dream. A fever. The dark elves, their magic is twisting my mind, making me see…see the most horrible things…horrible things…”
She shuddered, the chains clinking, and began to weep.
“This isn’t possible,” said Ridmark, his mouth dry. “You can’t be here.”
Yet she hung there, her wrists and ankles bloody and swollen from the shackles.
“This is your fault,” whispered Aelia, tears falling down her gaunt cheeks. “You did this to me.”
“No,” said Ridmark. “You’re safe in Castra Marcaine. You have to be.”
He wanted to run to her, to rip away those chains and take her away from this evil place, Ardrhythain and Rhyannis be damned. Yet something held him back, some tiny piece of caution. Aelia could not be here. It was simply not possible.
Yet she hung there nonetheless.
“I waited for you,” she said. “For years I waited! Tarrabus kept pushing, but I loved you and I waited. Then Father sent his knights to find you and bring you back. He forbade me from coming with them, but I disguised myself as a man-at-arms and vowed to bring you back. I would rip down the walls of hell itself to bring you back to me, my love. And then…and then…”
“What happened?” said Ridmark.
“We came here,” she said, spitting out the last word as a venomous hiss. “The Warden…Ridmark, we were fools. So proud, so arrogant, so foolish. We thought we could defeat the Warden and free you. Instead the Warden destroyed us all. His magic killed most of us. He locked the rest of us down here and sent his creatures to torment us. They took me…they do things to me, Ridmark. Every night,” she began to sob, her thin limbs twitching, “every night they come to me and they hurt me, over and over again…”
He could not bear it any longer. He stepped forward, intending to break her free of the shackles and take her to safety.
“Yes,” said Aelia, “please, help me, take from this place, set me free…”
Footsteps shuffled against the stone floor, and Ridmark whirled. Sir Joram limped into the chamber, his bloody feet slapping against the white stone.
“Joram,” said Ridmark.
Something stirred in the back of his mind.
“Free us,” said Joram, weeping. “Set us free and take us from this horrible place.” He tried to scowl, shuddered, and started weeping once more. “It is your fault that we are here.”
“Why didn’t you get her out of those chains?” said Ridmark. “I haven’t seen any of the Warden’s creatures in these corridors, neither the mutated orcs nor more urvaalgs. How could you let her hang there?”
“The Warden forbade it,” said Joram, shivering. “No one questions the Warden”
“Ridmark, please,” said Aelia, sobbing. “Let me go. Take me home. Please!”
Ridmark wanted to release Aelia from her chains and take her home with all his heart. Every fiber of his being screamed for him to act, to take her from this place of torment, and rebuked him for each second of inaction.
Yet everything about this seemed wrong. Both Aelia and Joram had aged decades. And Ridmark knew Joram. His friend was boisterous and prone to talking too much, but he was a true knight at heart. He would never let a woman hang helpless in chains when he had the capacity to help her, and certainly not the Dux’s daughter. Ridmark would not believe that even the Warden’s torments could change Joram that much.
Heartwarden’s soulstone was still glowing with white light. Dark magic was near.
Perhaps right in front of Ridmark’s face.
He took a quick step sideways and half-turned, putting his back to the wall and keeping his sword between him and the others.
“What is going on here?” he said.
“Ridmark,” said Aelia with a groan. “I love you. Don’t leave me here. Don’t leave me here!”
“We came to save you,” said Joram. “This is your fault.”
“No,” said Ridmark. “It’s not. I’ve only been gone six weeks. Not nearly enough time for the Dux to have sent a rescue party after me. And I don’t believe this story about time-warping magic. I haven’t been wandering these dungeons for decades. I’ve only been here a few hours. And both of you look as if you have endured years of torment.”
Neither Aelia nor Joram said anything.
“Which means,” said Ridmark, “that neither of you are really Joram Agramore or Aelia Licinius. What are you? A trick? Some illusion of the Warden’s magic?”
Still they remained silent.
“Very well, then,” said Ridmark. “I shall go on my way.”
He took a step towards the corridor.
Joram spun, faster than Ridmark had yet seen him move, and blocked the archway. The despair and the horror drained from his dirty, bearded face, and a mocking smile spread over his lips.
He looked….hungry.
“Then it is safe for me to assume,” said Ridmark, lifting Heartwarden, “that you are not in fact Sir Joram Agramore?”
Joram laughed at him.
“And you,” said Ridmark, “are not Aelia Licinius?”
Aelia grinned, her green eyes flashing with something like lust. “Did you just now realize that, human fool? We have been watching you. A human wielding a blade forged of high elven magic? It has long since we have seen such a sight.” She swung back and forth in the shackles, grinning like a madwoman. “And you slew our pet urvaalgs. Pity. The master shall be ever so disappointed.”
“The master cares not,” said Joram. “New urvaalgs are easy to create.”
“True enough,” said Aelia.
“What do you want?” said Ridmark. “All this mummery has a purpose. What is it?”
Joram laughed. “Why, to enjoy ourselves.”
“Yes,” said Aelia. “The master commands us to guard his dungeons from intruders. But he does not care how we do it. And fun is ever so hard to find.” She laughed. “You should have come to me, human fool. I would have shown you pleasure beyond the ability of your puny mind to comprehend ere I devoured your heart.”
She made an intricate gesture with her bound right hand, and the chains holding her vanished in smoke. She landed with a flex of her emaciated legs, that manic grin still on her face.
“Do you know what we are, human?” said Joram. “Do you know how you are about to die?”
“You’re urshanes, both of you,” said Ridmark. “Another of the dark elves’ creatures. They made the urvaalgs and the ursaars to act as war beasts, the urvuuls as living siege engines. But the urshanes were scouts. Spies. Infilt
rators. They could read the minds of their victims and take the form of someone he trusted. Just as you took the forms of Joram and Aelia to fool me.”
Aelia and Joram laughed at him, and their bodies blurred and rippled.
When the rippling faded, they had both changed. Now they looked like some bizarre combination of human, serpent, and hairless cat. Gleaming black scales covered their lean bodies like armor, and hooked black claws tipped their fingers and toes. Their faces were feline, with long fangs and yellow eyes split with a vertical black pupil. A segmented tail rose over each of their shoulders, swaying back and forth like a serpent, tipped with a barbed and poisoned stinger.
“Do you know how we have decided that you shall die?” hissed the urshane that at masqueraded as Joram.
“No,” said Ridmark, “but I know how you will.”
He charged, Heartwarden’s magic filling him with speed. The urshanes reacted as he suspected they would, jumping back and squatting, their long tails darting over their shoulders to stab at him.
Ridmark hit the floor and rolled, sweeping Heartwarden over him in a blur of white light. The blade sheared through the urshanes’ tails, their poisoned stingers dropping to the ground on either side of him. Both creatures reared back with screams of agony, their claws raking at the air. Ridmark rolled to his feet, hoping to strike before the urshanes recovered, but the creatures circled him, hissing and snapping. Ridmark turned, trying to keep both of them in sight at once.
“You will suffer for that,” spat one of the urshanes. Ridmark could not tell if it was the creature that had been impersonating Joram or Aelia. “We shall cut off your fingers one by one and make…”
Ridmark feinted towards the creature, bringing Heartwarden around in a quick slash. As he expected, the urshane jumped back, giving Ridmark the opening he needed to strike. He pulled out of the feint, swinging the sword with both hands, and brought the blade down upon the second urshane’s right elbow. The sword sheared through the arm, the clawed fingers falling to floor. The urshane screamed, rearing back in shock as black slime dribbled from the stump of its arm, and Ridmark struck again.
Heartwarden tore open half the urshane’s neck, and the creature fell, its remaining hand clutching at the ghastly wound.
Ridmark spun just in time to avoid the attack of the second urshane, ducking under the claws. He thrust Heartwarden, opening a gash on the urshane’s hip, and the creature hissed in fury. He drew back his sword to stab again, but the creature spun, cracking its wounded tail like a whip. The tail coiled around Ridmark’s left foot, and he lost his balance and fell upon his back. The urshane pounced, and Ridmark thrust up with all his strength.
Heartwarden punched through the urshane’s chest and erupted from its back. The urshane screamed and raked at Ridmark, but its strength drained away, and the creature went limp.
Then it blurred and changed.
Aelia stared down at Ridmark, suspended upon his blade. She no longer looked gaunt or tortured, but instead had the full ripeness of her beauty. Her green eyes widened, and she gazed down at him with shock and pain.
“Why, Ridmark?” she whispered. “Why…why…”
He knew it was an illusion, but Ridmark could not look away.
Aelia closed her eyes, the life draining from her face. Then her body rippled and changed again, reverting to the form of the urshane.
Ridmark grunted and pushed the urshane off him, Heartwarden sliding from its corpse with a wet sucking sound. He cleaned the slime from his blade, and then drew on Heartwarden’s magic until he had healed himself.
Then he slumped against the wall for a moment to rest. The fighting had taken more out of him than he would have liked, and drawing on Heartwarden’s magic always came with a cost to his stamina.
Seeing Aelia die like that, looking into her eyes as the life faded from them…that had disturbed him. It had only been an illusion, he knew, a trick of the urshane’s power.
It had seemed so real, so horribly real.
He pulled some food and water from his pack and ate and drank. Then he rested for a while, drifting off to sleep. When awoke, he was alone, save for the corpses of the urshane. Perhaps they were the only guardians the Warden had left to defend the secret entrance into his fortress.
Or, more likely, other creatures awaited.
Ridmark got to his feet and walked back to the hall with the balconies, intending to take the stairs leading higher up.
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Frostborn: The First Quest Page 6
