The Seven Signs: Three Book Collection

by D. W. Hawkins

  They hurried to the eastern wing of the temple, ducking through a hole in the wall. The smell of mold assaulted Dormael’s nose as they entered the ruins, the collected stink of forgotten years. The armlet was still glowing, its red light cutting the shadows. No one spoke as they gathered inside the entrance, and the whisper of the rain echoed through the empty halls.

  Dormael could feel the yawning menace of the place. The shadows compelled his eyes to pierce every corner, crawl over every water-stained block of stone. The hallways stretched to either side of them, shafts of low, storm-colored light leaking into the darkness.

  D’Jenn’s magic hummed, and a light blossomed in the air above them. It pushed away the dark, washing out the armlet’s vermilion glow. Everyone shared a wary look, and D’Jenn led them deeper into the ancient temple.

  They passed around a corner, and entered a hallway that stretched into shadow. Everyone moved in an anxious knot, boots scraping against the floor. The ruins smelled earthy, and as the rain picked up, Dormael could hear water trickling in the dark.

  The hall was interspersed with small chambers, filled with the remains of the temple’s past. Dusty, twisted wooden chairs that had long ago warped in the damp weather, or become homes to colonies of fungi, stood like crooked cenotaphs for their long-dead residents. Some of the old implements had resisted the progress of time, but most everything had begun to rot where it sat, forever dying in this forgotten, cursed place. Eating utensils covered in bubbled rust, desks that looked ready to collapse at a strong breath of wind, and pieces of glass so covered in grime that they were barely recognizable—all that and more passed under D’Jenn’s light as the party crept down the hall.

  Some of the door frames were intact, and were carved with intricate scenes from the Song of Creation—Evmir forging the world, Devla giving it life, and Eindor whispering secrets magics to the stones. The detail was painstaking, though much of what remained was chipped, marred, and stained from long years of neglect. Dormael tried to imagine this place at the height of its power, full of monks from all the priestly orders, their families, and congregations.

  “What happened here?” Shawna said, her voice echoing from the stone.

  “It was sacked during the Second Great War,” D’Jenn replied. “Destroyed by a tribal horde from Dannon.”

  “I know that much,” she said. “Lots of places have been sacked, people slaughtered. None of them feel like this place, though. What really happened here? How did the Dannon leave this murk over everything?”

  D’Jenn gazed at the shadows around them. “The Dannon have a ritual they call Mak-Savat. It translates roughly to ‘wrap-the-hilt.’ When one tribe conquers another, all the headmen and women from the defeated tribe are rounded up, along with their children—their version of nobility, or something like it. The headman of the victorious tribe has the prisoners tied to posts, and flayed in neat little patches. They start with the highest ranking, and move down the line to his wife, then his children. His brothers and sisters follow, then their children.”

  “Why?” Shawna said, her expression disgusted.

  “The conquerer makes a gift of the leather to his strongest warriors,” D’Jenn said. “The Dannon have shamans that chant over the skin as it comes off. The leather is used for the hilts of their blades. They believe the gods bless it, and it makes them strong in battle.”

  “You think they did that here?”

  “It’s possible,” D’Jenn said. “Some of the tribes on the Dannon steppe are known to take the skulls of their defeated enemies as drinking cups, or to wear their finger bones on talismans around their necks. Do you think their blood priests would have preached mercy on the people who sought refuge here?”

  Shawna looked around, a pensive expression on her face. “I’ve heard that bit about the skulls. Sometimes traders would come to my father’s manor, and brag of having seen them.”

  “I keep thinking about the story Lacelle told us,” Dormael said, trying to ignore the glow of the armlet around his neck. “The townspeople, and those children.”

  His words echoed down the corridor, and everyone shared an uncomfortable glance.

  The hall turned a corner to their left, and they made their way into a chapel of some sort. The room was wide, and extended into the second story of the structure. A hole in the upper northern wall let in the gray light, and the sound of the rain. An old iron frame still clutched to part of the stone, rusted from the years exposed to the weather. It was circular, and divided into eight sections that might have held colored glass at one time. Now creepers spilled in through the opening, winding past the twisted iron fingers and down into the room.

  D’Jenn sent his light higher, and increased its intensity. The shadows stretched as the light chased them away, and revealed a vast relief that stretched across the back wall. There were random things scattered about the floor, implements of the past now lost to the elements. D’Jenn gave Dormael a look, and stepped over to examine the carvings on the wall. Dormael followed.

  Much of it was unreadable. Water stains covered the majority of the sculpture, and Dormael could see places where things had been pried from the wall—probably jewels taken by the invaders, or later trespassers. Parts of it were outright destroyed. Every carving of the gods had had its eyes gouged out, or had other parts pulverized. On every carving of Aastinor was a gouged hole where his manhood would have been, and some of the female gods had their breasts destroyed as well.

  “Don’t let them touch it!”

  Dormael spun at the sound of the voice, pointing his spear toward the shadows. Everyone closed into a defensive circle, eyes scanning the dark. Moments passed in silence while Dormael held his breath, and shared cautious looks with his friends. The only sound was the rain whispering from outside.

  “Let’s find what we need and get out of here,” D’Jenn said, breaking the tension. He clapped Dormael on the shoulder, and they turned back to examining the ancient relief. Shawna and Allen, though, kept their eyes on the shadows beyond D’Jenn’s light.

  “They look to be telling a story,” D’Jenn said, running his fingers over the carvings. “Over here, it’s all motifs from the Song. Shadow and Light filling the Void with stars, Light giving Evmir the Hammer.” He ran his fingers further down the carving, and stepped along the wall. “Now—here is Evmir forging the world, Eindor whispering to the stones. It’s a narrative.”

  Dormael walked past D’Jenn, forgetting himself for a moment and reaching up to grab the Nar’doroc, hefting the glowing thing like a torch. He dropped it like a hot stone, unsure if the urge had been from his own mindlessness, or some effect of the armlet whispering into his thoughts. It hummed a quiet melody through the ether, but didn’t rise to his distress.

  The carvings further down the wall began to change. Spearmen battled in neat lines on one part of the mural, then a sizable chunk was missing. Next, a famine under a distant, cold sun. Marching formations of men, dragging a long line of women and children chained about the neck, preceded a wide area with nothing but burning homes. After that, another wide piece was pulverized into obscurity.

  “Look here,” D’Jenn said, brushing creepers from part of the sculpture. Dormael walked over, Bethany trailing in his wake. Allen and Shawna kept their eyes outward, but moved with the wizards as if they carried the only warmth in the room. The shadows crouched, waiting.

  D’Jenn grew irritated with trying to pull the vines aside, and whispered out with his magic. He touched a single leaf with the tip of his finger, and the creepers started to smolder. They burned away, a low flame crawling along their lengths, leaving only ash behind. When D’Jenn was satisfied, he pulled the power out of his spell, and brushed the ashes from the relief.

  The carving showed a single man kneeling at an altar, fists planted on the ground. Around him were stylized, rough depictions of the gods, all staring down at him with cruel expressions. Symbols were carved over the altar, curious runes that Dormael had never seen. They were c
ircles enclosing different glyphs—one divided into quarters, another slashed by three diagonal lines. Dormael counted each rune, ticking his finger at the symbols arrayed over the altar.

  “Seven,” he said aloud. “What was it the Mekai said about the Nar’doroc? That it granted seven signs of power over the world?”

  “That’s what he said,” D’Jenn agreed. “I think the next line was ‘take her and hammer their bones to dust.’”

  “I don’t recognize these runes,” Dormael said. “I think I can discern what a few of them mean, knowing the context, but I’m not sure. Have you ever seen their like?”

  “No,” D’Jenn said. “But it’s possible they don’t appear anywhere else.”

  “Look at this next part of the carving,” Dormael said, brushing away more ashes from the section nearby. In this one, horses and men ran in terror, all of them aflame. The ground swallowed groups of fighting men in another part, and next to that, a line of chained people breaking free.

  “This has been here all this time?” Shawna said, looking over the parts that Dormael and D’Jenn had revealed. “It seems so obvious. How does something like this just disappear from your histories?”

  “It didn’t,” D’Jenn said. “Our language changed, though. Old Vendon is a bastardized tongue, you know. It had no alphabet, or any sort of writing, before the Church Victorious sent its missionaries to the west. It borrowed the alphabet from the Church Cant, and the language that grew out of that mating went through a tumultuous period of change. It’s why translations are so difficult to rely upon. Over the years, as stories were passed down again and again, it was probably inevitable that some things would fade into obscurity.”

  “Had you ever heard the story before the Mekai told us?” Dormael said.

  “No,” Shawna replied.

  “Neither had we,” Allen said. “Father always used to say that Ishamael beat the invasion with sound tactics, and military genius. Some people say that Ishamael was blessed by the gods, but according to our father, that was the talk of—”

  “—priests and the bloody fools who follow them,” Dormael finished, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “He never did trust the Church.”

  “Hells, he never trusted anything that sounded official,” Allen said.

  Bethany gasped, and took Dormael’s hand in a fearful grip. She pointed toward the front of the room, eyes wide with terror. Everyone stiffened, and turned to see what had startled the girl.

  A man was tottering past them in the darkness, half illuminated by D’Jenn’s light. He was thin and bent-backed, and though his features were hidden in shadow, Dormael could see bloodstains on his hands. He wrung them together as he shuffled across the room, nodding his bald head as he moved toward the eastern hallway. His feet whispered over the stone, but he disturbed nothing as he passed.

  Dormael was on the verge of saying something, but some instinct clenched his throat together. He could do nothing but watch the old man as he walked by, and clutch to the spear in his right hand. Allen made to open his mouth, but D’Jenn shushed him with a hiss.

  At the noise, the man paused, and turned his head to leer in their direction.

  It was an odd movement, somehow wholly unnatural. His body was still, hands paused in the act of wringing bloodstained palms together. As his head swiveled in their direction, Dormael saw the man’s mouth hanging open, twitching in an attempt to form words. For a moment, nothing came out, and the man just stared at them across the distance of the floor.

  “Have you seen them?” he asked, voice dusty and ancient. “I keep looking, looking all over. But they’re gone.”

  A moment passed as everyone traded a nervous glance.

  “Looking for whom?” Shawna said. Dormael couldn’t take his eyes from the phantasm.

  “For…for the children, of course. Where are they? Gone, gone, and gone under the surface. Taken deeper into the dark. Oh! No—no, don’t make me do that. Not that.”

  “If I hit that thing, will it bleed?” Allen said under his breath.

  “I don’t know,” D’Jenn muttered. “Best to just leave it alone. Let it roam.”

  “I don’t want to be in the dark with that thing behind me,” Shawna said.

  “Can’t you hear them?” the specter said, despair leaking into his voice. “They’re gone but I can still hear them, hear them shuffling around in the dark. I can hear their laughter, their cries. I have to find them, find them all and tuck them away. Keep them in the hole, keep them with us.”

  He turned his head back toward the hallway, as if he’d heard a sound. With that, the old man tottered into the darkness, muttering and rubbing his hands together as he went. D’Jenn moved forward, magical light floating after the apparition. Dormael followed him, shooting a look down the hall as the light chased the shadows away.

  There was nothing but the silence of the dark.

  “Let’s not tarry long here,” D’Jenn said, staring after the space where the ghost had disappeared. “Or anywhere, for that matter. They’ll come to us like moths to the flame. Best to keep moving, and not give them time to gather their strength.”

  “They’ll come to us?” Allen said. “How do you know that?”

  “It’s the magic,” Dormael said. “No one knows why, but it attracts them. They can feel it somehow.”

  “You could have mentioned that little bit at any time,” Shawna said. “Shouldn’t you both stop using it, then?”

  “Sure, and you put your swords away, too,” D’Jenn grunted. “Let’s move. We should look for a staircase. I suspect that what we’re looking for will lie below the ground level.”

  “Why?” Allen said.

  “If you want to hide something, you bury it.” With that, D’Jenn motioned for everyone to follow, and headed toward the western hallway. Dormael spared a glance for the mural, and walked after his cousin. The rest of the party followed close behind.

  The western side of the temple was much like its opposite. They saw more ruined chambers, D’Jenn’s light peeking into the corners as they passed. The rain lessened as they moved down the hall, which only made the stillness feel more oppressive.

  D’Jenn turned to the right at the next intersection, heading toward the north side of the temple. They passed a large chamber that looked to have once been a library, though the books and scrolls contained within had long since succumbed to the pressures of time. Dormael picked up one rotten roll of parchment only to have it crumble away in his fingers. D’Jenn searched through the shelves in any case, grimacing at each ruined text.

  When they moved back into the hallway, Dormael could have sworn that he heard laughter echoing from somewhere in the dark. It sounded like a child, or maybe a couple of children, and the words of the old spirit came to mind—the children, of course. He tried to pierce the darkness with his eyes, but could see nothing. No one else looked to have heard the laughter, so Dormael kept his mouth shut about it.

  The hall terminated in a room large enough to house a pair of carriages. Tucked away in the corner was a set of stairs leading down into an inky blackness. The set leading to the second floor of the temple was ruined, with a huge chunk of stone having fallen from the middle. D’Jenn paused on the landing, and sent his light down into the hole. When he saw nothing but stone and dust, he turned and gave the party a questioning glance.

  Laughter sounded again, this time from close behind them.

  Dormael spun, gestured with his hand, and brought forth a light in the hall behind them. Everyone started back from him, Bethany giving a surprised yelp. The corridor lit up like midday in springtime, but there was no one there.

  “Are you alright?” Shawna said. “A little warning before you do that would be nice, you know. You’re not the only one ready to pull your hair out.”

  “Can’t you all hear them?” Dormael said.

  “Who?” Shawna replied.

  “The bloody children!”

  He paused as the words came out of his mouth, and
met the wary looks everyone gave him. Gritting his teeth, he let his magic go, and plunged the hallway into darkness once again. Muttering an apology, he gestured for everyone to continue.

  “Whatever lives here is probably trying to lure us into the dark,” D’Jenn said, turning back to the landing. “Stay close. I don’t think the spirits can hurt us if we ignore them, and keep moving.”

  A scream came hurtling from the darkness below, making Dormael’s hackles rise with instinctual terror. Something made of shadows and fog—something large—came flying up the stairs and slammed into D’Jenn. It drove him backwards, scattering everyone as he was bowled through them and against the wall.

  Dormael tumbled to the side, becoming tangled with his spear. He caught sight of the thing that had his cousin, but could make no sense of its form. It looked like a group of hands coalescing out of pure darkness, grasping at D’Jenn’s brigandine. It pushed him against the wall, his back scraping against the stone as the phantom raised him from the floor. It had a blob of shadow in place of a head, but it leaned in close to D’Jenn and screamed in pure rage, as if it was about to slam him into the stone like a child’s toy.

  Then, like a bubble of mist bursting in the sun, it was gone.

  D’Jenn slid to the floor, his struggles meeting nothing but air. Everyone scrambled to their feet, eyes shooting in every direction. Dormael stepped over and offered a hand to D’Jenn, who took it with a grateful nod.

  “Looks like they can hurt us just fine,” Allen said.

  “Doesn’t it just?” D’Jenn shot back, lips tightening. “Let’s go.”

  He paused to gather himself at the top of the landing, and looked at everyone to make sure they were ready. Dormael gave him a nod, and he turned toward the staircase. The shadows beckoned from below, filling the depths like an inky soup. D’Jenn sent his light floating down ahead of them, and stepped into the darkness.

  The sounds of wind and rain faded as they moved along the staircase. Instead, the scuffing noises of their boots echoed around the curving stairs, and bounced from unknown surfaces below. Dormael could hear everyone breathing, and the low noise of jingling armor and creaking leather.