The Last Pantheon: of spiders and falcons

by Jason Jones

  “Seems they know you here, James,” chuckled the minotaur, always in the mood for confrontation. “Mind filling us in before we have to take on yet another army for you?”

  “Saberrak, there is obviously a history here, and one that he will share when the time is right. Do you think it is safe for us to follow, James?”

  Shinayne backed the minotaur off from his antagonistic humor, sensing the delicate situation, and seeing the pain on Kaya’s face. The same pain was evident with their human friend. They needed him, she knew, since they were quite foreign here, and they would not abandon him in any way. Not now. Shinayne shot a pleading look to Saberrak, imploring him to be a bit more empathetic. Saberrak huffed in defiance at the elf, not overly sensitive to such things.

  “We need food, clothing, a good night's rest, James. You wear the same symbol as them, why is there such division? I thought we would find help here.” Saberrak spoke low, eyeing the men staring at them, many glances dropping away once noticed.

  “Better,” Shinayne nodded to the minotaur.

  Saberrak snorted and stared at the muttering soldiers until their muttering was hard to hear.

  James stood up, straightened, and looked the minotaur right in the eye at quite an upward stare. “Whatever they are holding against me was no fault of my own, and well in the past. To rest from many an ogre kill. To Southwind, if I am welcome! To Elcram if otherwise, I care not!”

  The knight started to walk, hands still shaking, not wanting those memories, nor the reopening of old wounds with the twins who were now the lords of his former home, thirteen long years later. He would simply avoid them. His determination to get wine, food, shelter, a bath, and more wine, had taken over any fear or reservations he had in returning here. His cares and shame had fallen back behind his need for a bottle and to get out of the cold.

  “Very well, I suppose we follow.” Shinayne nodded up to Saberrak.

  “Keep an eye on them, the two that look alike. They smell treacherous,” Saberrak whispered low.

  “Already watching horned one, I feel it as well.” Shinayne nodded. “And keep your scroll hidden.”

  “I will worry about the scroll, you keep an eye on James.” Saberrak huffed and they started after their human ally across the snowy field.

  Heirs I:I

  Thalanaxe Chambers

  City of Boraduum

  Bori Mountains

  “Most important are the vows to one’s family, they must come before God, for it is God who created the family.”-an ancient dwarven passage from the Golhiarden, Book of Vundren.

  “He is too weak to see ye, young Thalanaxe. Come back in the morning, lad.” His stout third cousin stood guard outside the double doors engraved with his family history.

  Azenairk bowed his shaved head, scratching his trimmed black beard, thinking of his chances if he took this dwarf down and barged into his father’s chamber. This man, his older cousin Dimlar, had been part of the Heldregg’s family for about two years since his family had lost their mines. He knew there was no loyalty to lean upon here. He turned, stomping down the passageway where the merchant vultures of the other families waited, had been waiting, waiting for his father to die.

  The Thalanaxe family had one loyal son left, and he had seen all the remaining relatives adopted into surviving families for far too long. They tried to talk to him, placate him, offer him solace within their families and reached out to him even in the temple of Vundren where he filled his days teaching the young of God’s will for their people in the Bori mountains. Boraduum, the largest dwarven city in Agara, held some thirty thousand dwarven men and women, almost one hundred different families, and more than six hundred tunnels.

  All that and more, Azenairk thought, and all they do is wait to take what is not theirs from the dying.

  A twist and a left turn under gray stone passages, down a curling stair, and behind an alcove, Azenairk stalked. No torch, no lantern, he knew these passages by heart.

  Hold on father, I will find a way to you, just hold on.

  Kimmarik, his father, had been left with tunnels too deep, too close to the outer caverns of the Bori mountains in the western part of the city. He did his best, yet the mines he owned had been dry for years and the tunnels collapsing. The Thalanaxe vault went bare, and in a matter of years the rumors had spread, then he fell ill. Families did their work, the Granvangs first, out of spite from money due for generations. Then the Ordimms and the Silvunaks joined in, convincing this one and that of the plight of the Thalanaxe family, offering a new start, and a new name.

  King Nalanobek and Bishop Dalurthain both took pity and tried to stop the inevitable, even before Azenairk’s pleas and formal suits of transgression hit the meeting halls. Nothing slowed the extinction of his family, his father and he the last of a line that dated its roots back to when men first came to this continent from the north over four thousand years ago. Tragedy after bad luck after misguided deal, the last few decades saw the decline of one of the oldest dwarven families in history. Now his family was done, and Azenairk walked the torchlit back tunnels to the rear entrance of his father’s room.

  The fifteen foot cathedral passageways were silent, over three times taller than the stocky bear of a man. And he was taller than any in his family, or what was left of it anyway. Azenairk remembered his father measuring him in their chambers before work in the mines, stopping the nicks in the wall when his mother had passed years ago. He was a hair or four under five feet now, fully grown, and had a full beard of shiny black, just like his old father had once. Now nearing his sixty-third birthday, his steel maul of a hammer easily hefted from whence his father gave it so long ago, Azenairk had been praying for guidance from Vundren, creator of the mountains, savior of his people, keeper of truth and deeds.

  Why is it you do not give me guidance, Vundren, when I need it most?

  He was praying for those fond memories to have a better finish than this. Azenairk had no direction, a futile feel to his every breath as all he knew, all he was proud of since a small child, was nearing an end he could not prevent. The stone design of the Hammer of Vundren laid over the two moons pressed into the stone easily, and Azenairk loosed his own hammer free, holding it steady with both arms tight. He was ready to kill, should anyone be in the chamber through the secret entrance he used. For he needed, more than any other priest, any merchant or any rival family diplomat, to see and hear his father these last remaining hours.

  ”Father?”

  The grand bedchamber was lit by glowing stones of ruby, jade, and amber, the divine light of the temple acolytes. Oil lamps were burning bright, candles surrounded gifts of gold and finely crafted steel weapons from honorable families and nobles for him to take with him to meet Vundren. Azenairk knew, with his estimates of debt, everything and more would be taken after he was gone and that would not even cover it. These tokens were hollow and empty. Gift or no gift, no matter the sender’s wishes, no matter the will of the temple, debt was debt and the laws stated in no gray area that all debts are paid if one wishes to pass through Vundren's gates into his halls.

  “Father?”

  Step by cautious step, Azenairk found his eyes wandering the tapestries again, like he had his whole life as far back as he could remember. The battle of the Misathi, the tapestry of King Egrinndim the Sixth of Fazurand, the second war of Marlennak, and many others decorated and centuries old. Collected by his father's, father's, father and one day he had hoped to receive them as his own to give to his children. The Thalanaxe’s had fought in almost every war, whether humans in Chazzrynn, ogre, or distant dwarven cousins. Even Harlaheim to the north had felt Thalanaxe steel in years long gone. Two brothers died in the last war, near the foothills of the Bori. A battle against an invading ogre legion allied with giants of the Misathi Mountains to the north, one battle Azenairk had been too young to fight in, one his father had commanded in. Despite losing his two eldest, his family was honored among the sixteen families that had defended the mounta
intop city that day. His battle axe still resting above his bed, old Kimmarik Thalanaxe, was at the end of two centuries of greatness in the eyes of his son, and the history books.

  “Zen, my boy, come closer son.”

  The raspy voice brought tears to his eyes, eyes he closed, for he would not show any regrets to his father in these last hours. The old dwarf, with white beard and disheveled long thin hair, barely a hundred fifty pounds now, lay under gold trimmed sheets of red wool. They were decorated with axes and twin mountains, the crest of his family.

  “You got past the line of crows, I see? Talk to me in our father's tongue son, just for tonight, eh?” The whispers drew the man closer to his father. He wished to speak dwarven, though the rise of merchant families and outer trade over the last centuries had Agarian slowly becoming the dominant speech of Boraduum.

  “What would you have your son do, father?” his voice soft, steady, in the sharp old dialect from his youth and the temple prayers.

  “Nothing son, nothing. At two hundred twelve, I no longer give orders or direction, just wait for it tis’ all then.”

  “I have prayed, fought, written the halls of both king and high priest alike. I will not leave our family, father.” Azenairk knelt next to his idol, his father who had been the strongest thing in his life.

  “There is little that can be done my boy, little indeed. This will be gone tomorrow, and I will meet Vundren at the gates of his mountain. There is one last thing I ask of you, besides forgiveness for what you have been dealt here.” The old dwarf coughed, mouth barely closing or opening as he spoke. The air just came and went as he became less and less vibrant.

  “Anything, Father. Do not seek forgiveness from me, there is none needed. I should have done more, fought more, seen it coming. Something.” He knew little could be done, even in hindsight their property turned up empty and then began to fall apart, there was no blame.

  “Your brothers never believed me, nor did I believe your papi when he told me, Vundren rest him. Go there, under that chest by the foyer, and get the small steel box under your mother’s things.” His eyes were alive like the blue of the outside sky, unlike the deep mountain brown eyes his son had inherited from his mother. Desperation in his faint fading voice and regret at his lost years, Kimmarik Thalanaxe yet felt some hope.

  His son reached into the dusty wooden chest, opened the bronze latch, pushing past old moth-eaten cloths and trinkets of his mother. A rusty steel box with the family crest on it,that was his inheritance, which was if he weren’t searched by the merchant guard. Carefully, the young dwarven priest lifted it out in the dank room and carried it over to his father’s bed, kneeling once more.

  “What is this? I remember it, by sight, but what is it?”

  “Ahhh, open it, open it. In there lies your future, boy. You haven’t seen this since you were knee high to a spider, I would bet. Remember the tales of Mooncrest and the great temples of Kakisteele, Azenairk?” his voice taking on a semblance of its former grandeur and spirit.

  The young dwarf bowed his head, knowing where this was going already. Memories of his youth sprang into his mind with a groan. Zen had grown up on those tales, ones that everyone knew were millennia old, exaggerated, and just that, tales. The great city of Mooncrest north of the Misathi and west of Shanador, the caverns of endless gold and iron built by Vundren guided dwarves that were never completed, and the great war fought there by elves, dwarves, men, and spirits of the forest….and the tales were never the same of this mythical forgotten place. Other families, even ones from other dwarven kingdoms, knew that a city near there had started long ago and was wiped out by war, by Altestan, and by plague. No two stories were the same, but for almost two thousand years, the search for these non-existent ruins was abandoned by any and all who had heard of it. In fact, mentioning it in any seriousness at all earned the inebriated old timer telling the tale plenty of ire and ridicule from anyone in earshot.

  This, Azenairk thought, is the one thing I do not care to hear about now, at the end of my family’s existence. He would rather marry a hundred women and try and procreate out of this mess than hear any of the old Mooncrest stories.

  “Father, you need your rest. Let us pray.”

  “Don’t you even try to pass me by here, boy. This has been in our family, secret now, for thousands of years, and ye can’t let the crows out there in the hall get it. Ye’ cannot.” The old dwarf opened the box with his gnarled fingers and swollen joints, revealing a bronze key the size of a dagger, an ancient bottle of some sort of dust, and a piece of parchment with the axe and moons crest of the Thalanaxe family wrapped tightly.

  “It is here, my son, the key to Kakisteele, the deed to the kingdom of the Crescent Moon, and the dust for the demon of ruin waiting under the forges. Take it now, take it.”

  “Father, this is ridiculous, no one believes in this anymore, grandfather even said once that it was...”

  “Do not speak ill then of your ancestors, son. Papi believed it, yer Mum never did.” His wheezing took over the conversation, until Azenairk gave him some water from a golden goblet.

  “Ergvhen.” Kimmarkik nodded in thanks.

  “Dhaugavin.” Azenairk took the goblet and placed his hand upon his father's brow.

  His hand was batted away, feebly, but he allowed it. “Father, enough. These last moments are for prayer and prepar---“

  “Baah. Says who, then? Not I.” Kimmarik stroked his beard with his trembling hand, only three of his fingers uncurling enough for the gesture.

  “Says the temple, says Vundren, as it has been.”

  “Not this time. I am ready to see Vundren, and he had better be ready for me. Our people have taken law and scripture, twisted it they have, into what you see here. They be lost in it, Zen, they are. As was I, for so long then.”

  “And that box, its fabled contents, they are a remedy for this?”

  “Mind your sharp tongue, boy. I may be feeble here, but don’t be thinkin’ I can’t lay a pounding to yer backside then.”

  “Forgive me, father.” Zen hung his head, knowing he had erred in sarcasm at such an important moment in time.

  “By the by then, as it were. Yes, those contents, they be from a time when Vundren guided our people. This is not just for our people, it is the place of the last pantheon, the last stand we made as disciples and children of the white moon. Son, we are divided, we are, and this is the only way to unite, before it is too late. Not a remedy, a reckoning it would be, and a future for you.” Kimmarik coughed and tried to cover it with his gnarled fingers.

  “I have a future with the temple.”

  “Nay, you had a beginning. No one will marry ye’, not with a name with nothing behind it but dusty pages o’ history and debt. Nay, if ye’ don’t take another family name---“

  “I would never.”

  “I know it, I know, son. But ye’ will die childless, without a wife, and lecturing prayers, alone. Then, Thalanaxe is all but a memory. I cannot allow that, son, I cannot. You have one chance, and this is it, son. It sadly be all I have left to give ye’.”

  Zen set down the box, upon the bed, and wiped his eyes. “Father, I have never left Boraduum, only been out---“

  “You promise me Azenairk Thalanaxe, on my deathbed, on the heads of your brothers and mother and our family line, Vundren keep them, that you take this and find it for me!” his voice was a forceful whisper, full of something not seen in decades.

  His father was delusional, the thought crossed the young dwarf’s mind. He did not answer, did not respond, just sighed in hopes this subject would pass.

  “You have nothing here, it's gone son, all gone. Head north, then west across the Misathi, don’t stop till ye’ see the golden peaks of the Kaki Mountains. When you find it, find the forges, the six legged demon that holds it cursed will come. When she does, you dump this dust down her damned throat, and pound her with that hammer I gave ye, once for your father, eh? Now get. Go before they come in to check on me.” />
  “Alone, how could I do this---“

  “Ye’ won’t be alone, damn ye’! I be watchin’ over ye’, as will Vundren. Ye’ have me word, if I have yers then.”

  His smile was so familiar, so full of life, Azenairk could not leave. He began to pray for the safe passage to Vundren’s gate for his father, praying for a sign, for something.

  “Grun haeder vun, asatru Vundren del---“

  “I have made my peace with God, our keeper, I don’t need more words from you son, priest or not! I need you to promise me you’ll do this one last thing for me. I love ye, son, I wish I could go with ye, prove it to ye, and be there to see it. Go. Go now, I feel the time comin’, I do.” Kimmarik put the rusty box into his son’s hands, and looked at him one last time, his eyes tearing, closing, but not letting them drop by strength of will alone.

  “All right then.” His eyes were starring at his father’s eyes, identical the two were except for color of hair, age, and held back sorrow.

  “The words, I need to hear em’, I do.”

  “I promise.”

  “Say it in dwarven, swear it to me then.”

  “Da uvren anshuvi ud Kimmarik Thalanaxe, da uvren esk.”

  “Thank ye’, now go son, and don’t look back. I need a few moments to have a word or two with God then. A long chat, about what he dealt me and yer brothers and mum and papi. He can make it up to me, with watchin you then.”

  “Do not say such things, father.”

  “Aye, Vundren Almighty can hear me fine, and he knows I be walkin his steps to Mount Maonell soon. You, you then, keep your feet ahead o’ ye, and that hammer ready, son. Go now.”

  “I love ye, father. May Vundren keep ye, farewell, and you tell him I will see him soon enough.” Zen got up, and turned his back.

  “Will do, son. Head south first, they will be watchin’ the eastern pass for ye, and the northern bridges too, once they realize you’ve gone. Guarantee they’ll be huntin’ ye, boy. Don’t let em’ catch ye. And thank ye, you be the last of my pride, don’t let me down, Azenairk Thalanaxe. Don’t let me down, little Agrvund.” His raspy voice drifted off, his son shutting the secret door to the rear chamber.