The Realms Thereunder aet-1

by Stephen Lawhead

  The riders passed by without a word being said on either side and eventually disappeared into the road ahead. “Who were they?” Daniel asked.

  “Just travelers. A lord and lady, by the look of it,” K?yle remarked tersely.

  They were passed by another elf on horseback, this one dressed in clothing that was quite hard to make out, since it was completely covered with brightly coloured ribbons of varying lengths. His hat was squat and had streamers erupting from the top of it. All this was dazzling, but that was nothing compared to the elf’s smile, which was like a blazing sunbeam when he flashed it in Daniel’s direction.

  “Good day to you, collier K?yle,” greeted the rider. There was a large instrument, rather like an oversized cello, lashed to his saddle, the neck of which was wide, fretted, and extended above his head.

  “Good day, Awin Kaayn,” responded the collier. “Where will you be performing this market?”

  “In the usual place-the common court-except for this evening when I will be entertaining the Elfin Prince Lhiam-Lhiat in the feast hall.”

  “Is he one of the nine?” Daniel asked Pettyl in a low voice, but loud enough that the musician heard him.

  “Aye, he is,” the brightly costumed Faerie said. “The Secondeldest of the Nine Great Rulers. Do you want to meet him?” he asked with a sly grin.

  “Would I be allowed?”

  “All things can happen for a price.”

  “I don’t have any money-”

  Daniel stopped talking as the collier placed a hand on his knee.

  This act was not unnoticed by the minstrel, who merely continued to smile wryly.

  “All of us are given great treasures at birth that may be negotiated and bartered with. Do you have an artist’s eye? What good is it to you if you don’t use it-you might enjoy having a musical ear instead, so why not trade it? Why hold on to your dancer’s toe if you never exercise it? Better to have a hound’s nose or the tongue of the birds. Nearly every virtue is saleable-as are all of the vices, except for one-do you know what that is?”

  Daniel didn’t respond, but Awin Kaayn seemed determined to wait for an answer, so he shook his head.

  “Greed! You’ll never find anyone willing to part with it!” He laughed merrily at his joke. K?yle and Pettyl frowned and continued looking stonily at the road.

  “Well,” the minstrel said, evidently knowing when a crowd had turned sour. “I’ll be off. Find me at the Fayre, young master,” Kaayn said to Daniel, “and I’ll play a song just for you.”

  And with a final flash of his smile, the minstrel spurred his horse and galloped on ahead, disappearing from sight a few minutes later around a bend in the road.

  “It will go better,” K?yle said to Daniel after a time, “if you allow me to deal for you at the Fayre, or you will find return to your own world quite beyond your means.”

  Nothing more was said and no other travelers greeted, until the Fayre was finally visible. There were indeed tents and booths set up, into the hundreds, and some were well over two storeys and made of many different composite parts. The booths were generally cubic and regularly spaced. The tents above them were of variable heights and sometimes spanned multiple booths. All were festooned with bright flags and banners embroidered with symbols of their trade. Freestanding tents were often erected in complex star-shaped patterns layered on top of each other, sprouting other tents out of their sides and sometimes out of their tops. Daniel wondered if they actually had different floors in them- some of them seemed as big as hotels.

  The people were no less strange and vibrant. All of them were dressed in such dazzling colours and fabrics that Daniel nearly became hypnotized by the ever-shifting crowd. More than a few nobles were swanning about in clothes decorated with glittering metals and stones.

  Due to the size of K?yle’s wagon, they were made to circumnavigate the Fayre in order to reach the area where the collier would set up his stall. This was in a lower part of the site, which was already quite muddy and where elves dressed in less ostentatious outfits seemed to be engaged in bartering for livestock or food stock.

  The collier hopped down from the cart and led the horses by their bridles to a large authoritarian figure whom the chaotic swarm of workmen seemed to orbit. They exchanged a few words, and Daniel saw the rotund elf point towards a bank of flimsy structures that some worker elves were attempting to erect. K?yle led the cart to their designated booth, which was little more than three flimsy walls that reminded Daniel of the fencing around his garden when he was young. There was also a large central post that rose from a hole in the middle of the site, which leaned at a disconcerting angle.

  As Daniel helped Pettyl unload some of the smaller barrels packed with charcoal, K?yle went to borrow some tools from the workers. He returned with a mallet and some wooden pegs, which he hammered into the ground alongside the walls and central posts in order to more firmly anchor them. It was the work of a moment and made the thin panels sturdy and upright.

  Then they set up their stall. Pettyl took the job of raising the tent as the other two unloaded the large barrels of charcoal.

  Daniel watched Pettyl scale the central pole, gripping a loop of string that she tied at the top and used to hoist the canopy, which was green and grey.

  “Those are the colours of our trade,” Pettyl explained when asked. “Red and yellow are the goldsmith’s, white and grey the silversmith’s, brown and black the bronzesmith’s, white with black and red feathers is the fletcher’s, yellow and orange the brewer’s, and so on. You will soon learn them.”

  “What about the . . .”-he didn’t know the word in Elfish, so he used the English-“blacksmith’s?” He was interested in what elfish weapons were to be had. “What colour is that? Red and black?”

  “What is a ‘blacksmiths’?” she asked, unpacking and smoothing down the surface of a long banner.

  “Someone who shapes, um . . . steel,” Daniel replied. “An ironmonger.” He drew his sword and tapped it.

  Pettyl twitched, as if shocked. “Put that away! Let none see it!” she whispered harshly. “Hidden prince,” she said as an oath, “if I had known that all this time, you-good elves have no need for such a thing!” she exclaimed.

  “What do you use for swords and tools?”

  “Bronze is good, as is brass or any number of mixed metals. Some swords are even made from stone, but those are expensive and rare-the art to wright those is being lost.” She frowned. “Steel is a cold, hateful metal, and iron is downright heartless. It houses none of the passion that the warm metals keep. It despises our flesh and corrupts it. We have no dealings with it.”

  Daniel sheathed his sword again. This information sparked a train of thought. He now recalled, vaguely, that iron was tied up with elfish lore and myths somehow. There was iron in his blood, he knew. Maybe they didn’t have any inside them. But did they get any of it in their diet? Had he been getting any of it in his diet? Maybe that was why he was feeling so fatigued.

  What would happen if he never got it? Would he die?

  “When will I be able to talk to someone who can send me back home?” Daniel asked the collier and his wife once the shop had been completely set up. Daniel was impressed. Various streamers and flags had been arranged to make a compelling pattern. Sawdust had been strewn all about the ground so that it was dry and clean, and a long banner with the colours of their trade and an elfish script describing their name had been fixed to a pole a little distance away from the tent, closer to the general flow of elves walking within the Fayre.

  “That is best done soon,” the collier said. “Pettyl will mind the stall now, you come with me.”

  The two followed a wide path that took them into the heart of the Fayre, where a group of more interesting and esoteric stalls stood. They passed cloth merchants selling clothes with fantastically woven patterns and pictures. Smaller vendors offered strange foods, calling out their names: Roc Eggs, Christian’s Delight, Old Man’s Temptation, something called snak
e’s hoofs, suckling roasted carbuncles, spiced mandrake root, and more besides.

  There were drinks and potions also: Honeymooner’s Mead, Red Absinthe, sweet milk, moly tea, and wines and cordial made of fruits and berries Daniel had never heard of before. Then they came to a part of the Fayre that sold charms and trinkets-table upon table of bright, dazzling pieces of metal- and stonework, as well as vials containing potions and elixirs.

  “The rule for the forest goes the same here-perhaps more so.

  Lest you be trapped here permanently, touch nothing.”

  Daniel kept his hands in his pockets but took in all he could with his eyes. There was a banner outside one blue-and-black tent that caught Daniel’s attention-he couldn’t read what it said, but it bore shapes that apparently represented different realms, because one of them was shaped exactly like Great Britain.

  4

  Alex inspected the wound at his side. It wasn’t much. It didn’t look as if he would need stitches. He went towards the dead dragon and started to work his sword out of it. “That was a good upwards swing,” he complimented Maccanish. “And well placed.”

  “Thank you. I’m a keen golfer. What do we do with the body?”

  “Whatever you like. Although it’s not going to be around for long. The natural chemicals it makes in order to spit fire are highly corrosive. It’ll be a pile of sludge by nightfall unless you know the proper way of removing them. Look, see-the head is already decaying.” Alex finally managed to pull his blade free. He inspected it. Apart from being covered in acidic dragon’s blood, it seemed none the worse for wear. It needed a good cleaning. Luckily, he had an alkali solution wash in his Land Rover.

  “Remarkable. What about the trolls?”

  “Again, whatever you please. Leave them here or call the Royal Society of Anthropology. That’d give them a fright. I always wondered what would happen if someone did that. In any case, my work here is finished. You had bigger problems than I thought if you had a dragon move in here.”

  “So what does that mean?” Maccanish asked. They stepped outside and stood in the cave’s mouth. “What does that mean for the valley? For our troubles?”

  “Well, you’ll be back to being able to sleep, for a start. People will be less inclined to evil deeds and the feeling of dread and oppression will be lifted. But people will still be hurt, and they’ll still be frightened, as they won’t understand, or allow themselves to understand, what has happened. It’ll be your job to help them through that. You need to keep an eye out, though. If the people hereabouts slide back into despair, these things and more could come back. Keep an eye out. And I’ll give you a number where I can be contacted. But you can give thanks now that you have been delivered from evil.” Alex stuck out his hand. “And I can give thanks that you’ve kept such an excellent golfing form.”

  Maccanish smiled and shook Daniel’s hand.

  “What are you going to do now?” Maccanish asked.

  “There’s one more thing that I need to check on. You go on back. Thanks again for your help.”

  “Thank you.”

  Rector John Maccanish started off, back down Morven. As

  Alex watched him go, he heard the man begin to sing a hymn as the clouds finally opened and released a gentle rain upon the mountain and its plain.

  Alex went back into the cave. He broke another glow stick and clipped it next to the other, which was dimming. He hung his sword by its hilt onto a carabiner on his belt; it bumped comfortingly against him as he walked. There would be no more danger here-he was no longer on alert.

  Instead, he tried to get himself in the right frame of mind- doing the mental exercises his father taught him-and walked farther into the tunnel. He stepped cautiously over the body of the dragon and then those of the trolls. He turned the corner and passed the dragon’s pile of shiny loot-its bedding. Then he came to a chiseled stone wall made of square one-foot-by-one-foot blocks, and about as high and wide as a standard doorway.

  Alex put his hands up against it and cleared his mind, thinking only of being between. He had no intents or aims in life; he was open to all options. He was standing at the crossing of all paths.

  He visualized this last thought as standing in a country road with signs pointing in all directions.

  It took a few moments before he felt his hands sinking into the stone. It was harder now that he was older and had a purpose in life, but his heart and soul were still open to new callings. Once his arms were through the stone, it was easy. He visualized himself being between the stones now. He stepped forward and, with a sensation like moving through water, he was through and into the hidden chamber of Morven.

  It was much like the others he had been in. A simple octagonal room with a ceiling, perhaps lower than others. Silver lamps lined the walls, throwing their ancient light on the stone plinths and the eight sleepers that lay on them.

  Except that these warriors were no longer sleeping-they were dead. They had been dressed in full plaids and sporrans and had been armed with two-handed claymore swords and sgian dubhs, but now their corpses were mangled, eviscerated, picked-over. Flesh had been torn from bone, joints separated, and the pieces scattered.

  It had been a one-sided slaughter. Looking at the centre of the chamber, he saw the fragments of the stone-coloured oblong egg that the dragon had hatched from. It had been easy to see what had happened as the infant dragon hatched and fed first on one body and then the next, probably over the course of a couple weeks, maybe more. The trolls, attracted to the area by its atmosphere of evil, had set up in the cave and it had killed them too. As lucky as he was to escape with his life, it was a marvelous stroke of fortune-for him and the entire country-that Alex had come across the dragon now while it was still an infant and not a fully grown adult.

  But who placed the egg here? Across the chamber, the wall, which was supposed to be enchanted like the one he had passed through, had been torn down-or rather, knocked through. Its stones lay strewn across the floor.

  A hand clamped around Alex’s foot and he started. He swallowed and looked down in horror-one of the dead bodies’ arms was gripping his boot. It was connected to a shoulder, a torso, a head, and nothing else. The mangled face of the highlander moved and Alex heard the words, in Gaelic, “Fuasgail sinne.” Release us.

  The spirits of the dead men were still in their bodies-they had not been released from their contract of immortality yet. They had lain here all this time, waiting for the battle, and for them the fight had never come, only a painful, prolonged death. With a lump in his throat, Alex pulled his foot gently out of the knight’s hold and strode to the wall where the horn was hanging. He blew a strong note on it, and the air seemed to grow warmer; a wind moved through the tunnel with a sound like a sigh of relief.

  For a moment there appeared before Alex’s eyes the silvery outline of a man in old highland gear with a gleaming sword in his hand.

  “Buidheachas,” the figure said, looking Alex in the eye.

  “Slainte agad-sa,” Alex replied. “Slan leat.”

  The apparition smiled and then faded. The lamplight returned to its full brightness, and the chamber was still.

  Alex set about rearranging the bodies on the stone slabs as best he could-there would be no more honourable burial place than this cavern, where the lights would burn for all time. It was gruesome work, but after a while he managed to place the bodies and weapons in respectful order.

  He stood for a time looking at the torn-down wall and wondered who had made it and where they had come from. The largest part of him wanted to follow it and track down whoever had done this, but he knew that wasn’t the prudent thing to do. Instead, he left back through the wall he had entered by, went through the cave, and stepped into the open, still-drizzling air.

  As he walked down the mount and back to his Rover, he pulled his phone from his pocket and rang his associate.

  After relaying what had occurred, omitting no detail, his associate said, “The bleed has started-b
ut it is hard to tell the extent, even yet. We must go to Ni?ergeard-that is where we will find answers.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Quick Blood

  1

  Before . .

  . “I don’t understand,” said Freya. “What should we be looking at?”

  “A vast underground lake, nearly big enough to be called a sea-its surface completely smooth and still, for no creature stirs it, nor the slightest breeze moves across it. But not this-this dark emptiness!”

  Swi?gar took several steps forward and descended down a sand-and-stone slope, which ended after several feet in a flat, black, dry, cracked mud floor. “It’s gone. The Sl?pismere is gone!” he exclaimed in a harsh whisper.

  “What does that mean?” Freya asked.

  “It means that the hidden world is already feeling the affect of evil spreading in this land,” Swi?gar answered. “They have already started claiming victories-decay has set in. This is why our task is of such import.”

  “What’s that?” asked Daniel, pointing along the dry bank. There was some sort of wall that extended into the empty lake. They walked over and investigated.

  “It is a pier,” said Ecgbryt as their torches revealed it more in detail. On the far end, several wide, flat-bottomed boats dangled lengthways from a chain that was still attached to a metal pillar. Swi?gar gave one of them a push and it gave a couple tragicomic swings before scraping to a halt.

  “Well, let’s get started,” said Ecgbryt. “We must go on if we are to keep the pace.”

  Walking along the dry lake bed was much easier than picking their way along the rocky tunnels now above them. The ground was basically flat, sloping gently downwards.