by Kody Boye
Carmen shook her head. Still suffering the effects of the hangover, she kept quiet and casually sipped water as she went about arming herself for the day’s excursion.
“I used to think the entire mountain was like Ehknac,” Lindsey continued, obviously unaware or at least indifferent to Carmen’s silence. “I mean, I didn’t grow up there or nothing, but once you’re there for a while, you start to think everything else is the same.”
“Yet it isn’t,” Carmen said.
Lindsey nodded.
The brutal chill she’d suffered while venturing toward the Falls was proof enough that the climates within varied. Though Ehknac was moderate compared to the rest of the Hornblaris, there were places within where ice hung in sheets, where lava flowed freely, where the cracks in the jagged mountainside offered glimpses of fresh and life-giving air. It even rained in some places, which she wasn’t looking forward to in the capital, as she would likely fall victim to it once it finally occurred.
She finished strapping herself into her leather chestpiece and took a deep breath as she examined herself in the mirror, the bags beneath her eyes the darkest she’d seen them in days. She leaned forward to examine them and nearly tumbled over.
“Too bad we’re not accompanying a caravan to Xandau,” Lindsey said. “At least then you’d be able to sleep it off.”
“I could never sleep in moving caravans,” Carmen said.
And probably won’t be able to ever again, she thought, but chose not to give life to that sentiment.
A knock came at the door. “Ladies!” Timon called in. “Are you almost ready to depart?”
“Just give us a moment!” Lindsey cried. “Dear God.”
“I swear,” Arrick could be heard saying in the hall. “These women and their makeup.”
“We’re not wearing makeup you ass!” she called back.
The man grumbled and knocked on the door several times with enough force to shake the frame. “Come on, Lindsey. You know we’re on a deadline.”
“We’re coming!” the woman cried. “Dear God. Shoot me with a blunderbuss already.”
“I’d imagine that’d kill you,” Carmen frowned.
“Exactly,” Lindsey replied.
Carmen couldn’t help but giggle.
- - -
The bitter chill that emanated from the deep recesses of the nearby caverns was enough to cause Carmen to shiver. Guided solely by the sunstone staff carried by Barris, they made their way through the wicked pathways and began to enter tunnels that threatened to send Carmen’s claustrophobia into overdrive.
You’ll be ok, she thought, eyeing the narrow passage with suspicion as she traced the clouds of bugs hovering in the air.
A massive figure—larger than her head—flew over, screeching as it spread its wings and snapped the bugs into its mouth.
“Fucking bats,” Barris said, shooing the creature away with the staff as it came in for a second run. “Get out of here you scraggly mutt.”
“And that’s just a small one,” Arrick said. “Aye. I’d reckon the bigger ones would try to eat us.”
“Don’t say that,” Carmen groaned. “Seriously. Please. Don’t say that.”
“It’s just something we have to watch out for,” Timon said, drawing up alongside her. “Besides—we’re safer here in the tunnels than we are out in the open.”
“Easier to defend,” Lindsey said.
“Unless we get swarmed from both sides,” Carmen replied.
“Quite the pessimist, aren’t we?”
“I don’t like tight spaces.”
“Aye!” Arrick laughed. “I’d love one right about now!”
Barris laughed along with him. Even Timon chuckled, but Carmen elbowed him in the side, instantly shutting him up.
“Stupid men,” Lindsey groaned. “All you can think about is what’s in your pants.”
“Quite the contrary, my lady,” Arrick replied. “We’re thinking about what’s in your pants.”
“Don’t make me cut your head off.”
“Which one?”
Barris howled with laughter, the sound echoing along and reverberating throughout the tight space. Amplified, it sounded like a wicked God laughing their clever misfortune.
“It doesn’t matter,” Lindsey said, drawing up alongside Carmen when the two older men continued to laugh and crack jokes at Carmen’s expense. “Carmen isn’t comfortable, and I don’t see any reason to continue making her any worse.”
“I’m fine,” she said, but would prefer them stop rather than continue on.
They didn’t, bantering between one another about women and past wives. Carmen, in response, reached down and clutched the glow worm against her chest, sighing as the cool glass pressed against her clammy skin.
They’re just being men, she thought. Nothing to concern yourself over. They’ll get over it. Eventually.
And eventually they did. Having grown bored of the topic at hand, they settled down and instead kept their silence, preferring to speak only to comment on the bats or how their feet were starting to kill them after such a short day of travel. The path was sloped here—carved by the ingenuity of modern Dwarven machinery—and offered little respite in terms of leverage. It felt like they were climbing more than actually walking, which wasn’t exactly untrue, considering they were making their way to another level within the Roads.
This pass was the one Carmen’s family would’ve taken had they not insisted on circumnavigating the Pass.
That damn caravan, she thought. That damn caravan and that damn drake.
She wrapped her arms around herself and rubbed at her clothes, shivering as a cool gale whipped through the tunnel and scattered her hair around her face.
“Get used to it,” Timon sighed at her side. “It’s only likely to get worse.”
- - -
By the time they stopped that night, Carmen was almost ready to throw herself into the glassfire in the safestop.
“I don’t ever want to leave,” she sighed as she settled before its surface, rubbing her hands and smiling as her chilled skin finally began to warm.
“We’re going to have to,” Barris said.” It’s not like we have much choice in the matter.”
“This is why most people come bundled up,” Arrick said. “Too cold for most people.”
“And it’s the only way to Xandau,” Lindsey added. “Unless we wanted to take the shortcut through along the Pass. Which we most definitely wouldn’t. Especially with—”
Lindsey paused, but the damage had already been done.
Carmen sighed and wrapped her arms around her knees.
It was still so fresh in her mind. That night, that fight, those fires, those screams, those smells of flesh as it was burnt alive and the feeling of helplessness as beneath a caravan she remained trapped—all beckoned to her conscience a plea from insanity that said only one thing: help.
When she began to cry—this time for the first time since setting out—Lindsey settled down beside her and wrapped her arms around Carmen’s shoulders. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I didn’t mean that.”
“I know you didn’t,” Carmen said. “It’s just hard sometimes, you know? Trying to distance myself from everything that’s happened. One moment I’ll be fine, then the next I’ll feel like my entire world is on fire.”
“Life’s like that at times,” Arrick said, settling down on the stone bench beside her. “Sometimes it throws you punches you just can’t handle.”
“And that’ll always take you down,” Timon said, setting a hand on her shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” Carmen said, reaching up to wipe tears from her eyes. “Really. I’m sorry I’m acting this way.”
“You shouldn’t apologize for anything,” Barris said. “We’re all Dwarves. We all have feelings—doubts, fears, worries. Mourning is a natural reaction to something devastating.”
“Because once something like that’s gone,” Lindsey said, “you never get it back.”
No, Carmen thought, and bitterly at that. You don’t.
- - -
The Dark Tunnels—famed for snuffing firelight due to the decreased amount of oxygen within them—was the final hurdle they would have to jump before they reached the bustling historical settlement known as Xandau.
“Masks on,” Arrick said, drawing over his bearded face the alien-looking mask that would serve as a filtration system within the tunnel.
Carmen pulled the contraption over her head and grimaced as the area before her was immediately darkened by the goggles upon it. Knowing that she would have to endure this for some days now in order to maintain her vision and to keep from passing out from oxygen deprivation, she pushed forward alongside Timon and Lindsey and tried her hardest not to wheeze through the filtration system over her mouth.
“You might as well breathe normally,” Lindsey said, her voice sounding deep and muffled through the mouthpiece. “You’re going to end up passing out otherwise.”
“I feel like we’re making a lot of noise.”
“We’re wraiths in the darkness,” Barris said, “making our way through the longest tunnels known to Dwarvenkind.”
“We’re not going to be followed here,” Lindsey added. “And even if we were, we have the advantage of facemasks. The bats won’t come in here because there’s no bugs, and the skitters stay clear because there’s no prey for them in here.”
“So it’s just us,” Carmen nodded, content with that realization. “All right. Cool.”
Though she knew her fellow guards couldn’t see her beneath the facemask, she steeled her emotions as she continued forward and allowed her hand to remain at her side—knowing, without a shadow of a doubt, that danger could come at any moment. She feared other creatures in the dark: specifically the angels, who would pursue with reckless abandon, and the wicked Taengwa that resembled stalactites but would, with their sharpened points, descend upon travelers and wrap them within their amorphous limbs.
So far, Carmen hadn’t seen any stalactites within the tunnels. The earth had been perfectly hewn by Dwarven machinery. There was nothing here. Nothing at all.
Except us, Carmen thought, wandering through the darkness.
They said that demons persisted in the deepest parts of the mines—that, upon drawing closer to Xandau, the body-snatching bugs would burrow into the corpses and dig themselves free of the earth. She knew this was why they cremated or sealed within stone coffins their unfortunate departed, but the fact that several Dwarven communities existed outside the cities—and may not possibly follow similar rituals for whatever reason—made her skin crawl.
She didn’t want to have to deal with any corpse bugs. Though she’d only heard of them, what little her father had once detailed had been enough to give her nightmares as a child.
Breathing through the mask, Carmen drew alongside Lindsey and pressed a hand to her back. “Are we near any settlements we might have to worry about?” she asked. “I know we’re drawing closer to Xandau. I don’t want us to be ambushed for our goods.”
“We’re not going to be ambushed,” Lindsey laughed. “And even if we were, it’s not like we have much of value on us.”
Carmen swallowed. They don’t know, she thought, about the diamonds.
If anyone had even a lick of knowledge about what she was carrying, she’d be dead in a heartbeat.
She carried, in one sack, a large fortune, one whose sum could buy one’s place out from beneath the Dwarven government and still have a lengthy sum left after retirement.
Shaking her head, Carmen continued onward.
She couldn’t think about the potential of being ambushed.
She had to expect the roads were clear—that regardless of the bandits that occasionally wandered the mines in search of unsuspecting caravans, they would be handled by the patrols that wandered the roads from Ironmend and beyond.
- - -
They were liberated of their masks four days later, and with it Carmen breathed in air she felt she hadn’t experienced for a lifetime.
“Thor,” she breathed, taking in another deep breath. “Loki. Hel. Odin.”
“We’re finally out,” Timon smiled, spreading his arms and inhaling through his nose. “Who would’ve thought fresh air would be this good.”
“I sure didn’t,” Carmen sighed. “It’s been so long since I’ve been in the Roads that I forgot how horrible this leg of the journey was.”
She could faintly recall, from her youth, the feeling of being suffocated—of devilish creatures in masks as through a dark tunnel they walked. Afterward, she’d thought of the nightmares just as dreams and nothing more. It was only now, in seeing the masks dangling from her companions’ grasps, that she remembered.
As she looked toward the horizon, trying her hardest to dispel the childhood fears about her, she saw in the distance what appeared to be a spiral tower rising from the ground.
“Is that,” Carmen started.
“Xandau?” Arrick asked. “Aye. She is.”
“It’s beautiful,” Carmen said, tucking her mask into her pack before taking a few steps forward, the light from her glow worm activating as she reached up and brushed her hand along the glass. “I never imagined it looking like this.”
“It’s a historical landmark for a reason,” Lindsey said, stepping up alongside her. “It was the site where the last battle took place before the Great Peace began two-hundred years ago.”
“And what a place to end it,” Timon said, stepping up to Carmen’s left. “Shall we?”
Carmen reached down, fingered through her satchels until she felt the diamonds within one, and nodded.
She started forward without a word in response.
- - -
The historical site of Xandau had been carved from and was built upon a massive stalagmite that rose up from the ground. Resembling a shell in that it had been meticulously carved to create both its opening threshold and several windows, they passed beneath a hanging archway before entering into a tunnel that led into the fortress. Carmen—who couldn’t remember a thing from her previous excursion to the structure as a child—marveled at the world outside the windows as they continued to rise, then gasped as they turned and made their way into the main part of the stalagmite.
The inside was a cornucopia of activity. From all sides of the structure people walked, talked, bantered, laughed. Several shops flanked their sides, while at the center a massive chasm looked down into several other levels—which included, as far as Carmen could see: bakeries, ironworks, and passages to where she imagined personal quarters lay.
It was, in a word, amazing.
“I can’t believe this,” Carmen said, turning in a complete circle as they walked into the structure. “This is… absolutely incredible.”
“It’s the main hub of activity before Dorenborough,” Arrick said, placing a hand on her left shoulder as he stepped up beside her.
“Do you know where the merchant’s guild is?”
“That… is something you would have to ask one of the guards,” the man replied. “Do you have business there?”
“In a way,” Carmen said, casting a glance back at Timon, who only nodded.
Lindsey gestured to a Dwarf outfitted in heavy metal armor that stood nearby. “I’d ask him,” she said.
“Excuse me,” Carmen said. “Sir.”
The man lifted his head as Carmen approached. “What can I do for you?” he asked, grunting as he shifted in his heavy armor to take better hold of his poleaxe.
“I’m looking for the Merchant’s Guild of Xandau. I have something I need to deliver to a Ceclia Winterburgh.”
“Ah. The guildmaster,” the man smiled. “If you’d like, I can direct you there while your companions find room and board at the inn.”
“That would be excellent,” Carmen said. “Lindsey—could you—”
“Already got it,” the woman said, sliding Carmen’s pack off her arm before she could finish.
“Thank
you,” she said, then turned to face the guard.
With that, he began to lead her toward a revolving staircase. Here they descended, and as they did, Carmen’s suspicions about her surroundings were confirmed when the smell of hot breads and pastries wafted into her nose, followed by the pungent odors of metals as they were hammered and smelted in the hot fires of Xandau.
“How old is this place?” Carmen asked, admiring the intricate carvings along the walls that highlighted and gave reference to the various aspects of the fortress’ locations.
“People have been settled here for five-hundred years,” the man replied. “Almost as long as King Oorin has presided over the kingdom.”
“Wow,” Carmen said. “It’s amazing.”
“That’s the kind of reaction we get from most travelers when they come through here,” the guard chuckled, turning to face Carmen as they stopped at the threshold to one of the sublevels. “This is where the Merchant’s Guild of Xandau resides. Inside you’ll find its members loitering about, working and performing other various tasks. They should be able to direct you to Cecilia.”
“Thank you, sir,” Carmen said, passing a few pieces of copper into the man’s hand.
He counted them, nodded, then turned to make his way back toward the stairwell.
Carmen took a deep breath, prepared herself for what she was likely to face, and entered.
As the guard had stated, several people stooped over desks, either crafting items, cataloging them into impressive books, or speaking with perspective clients about purchases. The sight of beautiful jewelery, of hand-stitched clothing and of intricate carvings of Gods and other figures made her stop and gaze in awe—which quickly attracted the attention of a taller Dwarven woman.
“Can I help you?” she asked as she turned from talking to a worker and made her way toward Carmen, her long red hair spilling like fire over her shoulders.
“I’m looking for Cecilia Winterburgh,” Carmen said.
“That would be I,” the woman replied.
“It’s about a delivery from Ehknac. From a mister… uh… guild… man?”
“You never got his name?” the woman frowned. “Some courier you are.”
“I’m not a courier,” Carmen replied. “I’m doing it as a favor for someone who helped me.”
