“A natural force,” said Coriolus, “given a name through fear and superstition. One…”
“A moment,” said Calliande. “A place called Dragonfall. Do you know of it?”
Her face was calm, but Morigna thought she saw a hint of tension there.
Coriolus blinked a few times. “No, I’ve never heard of it. What is it? Some fable, perhaps, or…”
“Thank you,” said Ridmark, rising to his feet, “for your counsel. We shall trouble you no further. If you could teach the spell of detection to Morigna before we depart, we will be grateful.”
“Very well,” said Coriolus. The Old Man’s watery eyes turned toward Morigna. “It is time for another lesson, child.”
###
Ridmark stood behind the cottage, gazing at the ring of dark elven standing stones upon the hill across the ravine.
They were more complex than the circle where Vlazur had tried to kill Calliande. Two massive rings of dark menhirs, some of them topped with lintels, stood in a ring around a low mound of earth. An altar of black stone capped the mound, still rough and jagged despite the passage of the centuries. The dark elves had used these stone circles to augment their sorcery, drawing upon the magic of the earth like a miller using a stream to drive his grindstone.
The ruins of the dark elves he had seen, citadels like Urd Dagaash and Urd Arowyn and even Urd Morlemoch itself, had been places of beauty. Alien, eerie, disturbing beauty, but beauty nonetheless. The stone circles of the dark elves made no such pretense. Ridmark suspected the dark elves lied to themselves, as wicked men often did, claiming that they were in the right.
But at the stone circles, all pretense was stripped away.
Calliande stepped to his side.
“Perhaps you ought to keep an eye on Morigna and Coriolus,” said Ridmark, “and make sure he doesn’t hurt her.”
“He won’t,” said Calliande. Ridmark glanced back at the others. Morigna and Coriolus stood at the far edge of the hilltop, the Old Man gesturing as he lectured. Caius and Kharlacht and Gavin sat upon the ground, cleaning their weapons and armor, but they kept an eye upon the Old Man and his apprentice.
“My sensing spell is active,” said Calliande. “If he tries anything, I will detect it. Though he is powerful, Ridmark. He can draw on both the magic of the Well and earth magic, and God only knows what else. If he wants to fight, I don’t think I could defeat him.”
“He won’t fight,” said Ridmark. “Rjalfur was right. He is a coward.”
Calliande nodded. “You didn’t even need to threaten him very much, and he told us everything.” Her blue eyes strayed toward Morigna. “It explains a lot, doesn’t it?”
“It does,” said Ridmark.
“I thought she might be someone like Talvinius or Alamur,” said Calliande. “Now I simply feel sorry for her.”
“Don’t tell her that,” said Ridmark. “She might bite your head off.”
“Aye, and then lay her eggs in my neck,” said Calliande. She shook her head. “No, forgive me, that is harsh. What happened to her is not her fault.”
“But she bears responsibility,” said Ridmark, “for whatever she chooses to do next.”
“As do well all,” said Calliande.
Coriolus threw up his hands in disgust and stalked into the cottage, slamming the door behind him. Morigna stared after him, a flicker of pain on her face. Then she shook her head, arranging her features into their usual arrogant mask, and walked to join Ridmark and Calliande.
“It is done, then?” said Ridmark.
“Aye,” said Morigna. “He taught me the spell.” She sniffed. “Had the pompous old fool taught it to me earlier, we might have avoided much trouble.”
“I take it,” said Calliande, “he will not talk to us further.”
Morigna’s smile was icy. “He said we could see ourselves out.”
Ridmark nodded. “Did he tell the truth?”
Morigna blinked. “About what?”
“Everything,” said Ridmark.
“He contradicted nothing he had told me earlier,” said Morigna. “But he has never told me his name. Or his story about his bastard lover.” She shrugged. “He could have been telling the truth. Or he could have spun you a tale.” She looked at Calliande. “You’re the learned Magistria. Was there ever a bastard Pendragon woman named Victoria?”
“I don’t know,” said Calliande. “It would have been after my time.”
“After your time?” said Morigna, incredulous. “It would have been decades ago.”
Calliande took a deep breath. “I will tell you the truth, Morigna. I don’t know how old I am. Thirty-three days ago, on the day of the blue fire, I awoke in a vault below the ruins of the Tower of Vigilance in the Northerland. The Tower burned and fell into ruin ninety years ago, which means I might have been lying in that vault since the Tower was built.” She shrugged. “And I can remember nothing of what happened before I awoke.”
For the first time Ridmark could remember, Morigna was at a loss for words.
“She’s telling the truth,” said Ridmark. “I was there.”
“Hellfire and damnation,” said Morigna. “So you might be older than the Old Man, then?”
Calliande nodded.
“Why tell me this?” said Morigna.
“So that you understand that I am sincere,” said Calliande, “when I tell you that I am sorry your parents died, that you had to grow up with such a wretched man as Coriolus.”
Morigna’s eyes narrowed, and Ridmark expected her to fly into a tirade. But something seemed to wither in her hard black eyes, and she sighed.
“Thank you,” she said, as if the words pained her. “I…he truly is wretched, it is he not? I thought he was a wizard of power, hiding from the church and the Magistri because they feared him for his intellect. Instead he is an old wretch who could not even take responsibility for his bastard child.” She spat. “He truly is a coward.”
“Perhaps,” said Ridmark, “but he is powerful. And I am sure he didn’t tell us the entire truth. You said he hardly ever leaves his home, but you have been gone for months at a time for the last eight years.” Morigna nodded. “Yet if he could detect the dvargir and you could not…I wonder if he could make himself undetectable to you, or to anyone else.”
“So what do you intend to do next?” said Calliande.
“We’ll camp here tonight, inside Coriolus’s wards,” said Ridmark. “Then we will visit the Deeps, and see if the dvargir are indeed stirring.”
Chapter 13 - Silence
The next day as the morning sun rose overhead, Ridmark stared into the darkness.
Specifically, into the darkness of the entrance to the Deeps.
The entrance was a few miles north of the hill with the ring of standing stones. As they circled the base of the hill, Ridmark kept a wary eye on the dark stones upon the hill’s rocky crest, watching for any sign of movement. Nathan Vorinus had fallen beneath the talons of an urvaalg there, and it would not surprise Ridmark to find more of the twisted creatures upon the slopes.
Yet nothing moved on the hill. Not even birds flew overhead. Though if Morigna could not magically compel her ravens to fly over the standing circle, Ridmark doubted a normal bird would do so.
But they saw no sign of any undead or urvaalgs, and soon they stood before the entrance to the Deeps.
Ridmark had ventured into the Deeps more often than he had liked, but he had never seen an entrance quite like this one. A tunnel mouth yawned in the slope of the rocky hill, but the arch had been carved and worked by living hands. Dozens of square, angular glyphs encircled the entrance.
The dwarven language.
Caius stared up at the glyphs.
Morigna blinked. “You can read those?”
“Certainly,” said Caius.
“You know the dvargir tongue?” said Morigna.
“They’re not dvargir, but dwarven,” said Caius. “An archaic form, but still dwarven.” He pointed at the arch. “A gu
ide to any travelers of my kindred. According to the sign, the stronghold of Thainkul Dural lies a few miles within the tunnel.”
“Thainkul Dural?” said Calliande.
“The Three Kingdoms of the dwarves were once nine,” said Caius. “Three still stand in the Deeps to the west, but the urdmordar and the dark elves destroyed several, and others turned to the worship of the great void and became the dvargir.” He scratched at his graying beard. “I think Thainkul Dural was an outpost of one of the lost six kingdoms.”
“And then the dvargir just moved in?” said Gavin.
Caius nodded. “My kindred build mighty strongholds, and our sundered cousins have an eye for quality.”
“So the dvargir are really dwarves, then?” said Gavin. “Just dwarves that chose to worship the great void.”
“Not quite,” said Caius.
“The choice to follow the great void is different than any other choice,” said Calliande. Her voice was distant, and Ridmark stopped and looked at her. Her voice only took that tone when she remembered something she had learned before she had gone into the long sleep below the Tower of Vigilance. “A man can choose to be a murderer or a thief, and while his crime leaves marks upon his soul, it does nothing to his flesh. Choosing to worship the great void is a weightier choice. Swearing to the darkness, pledging to serve it, draws some of the darkness into the worshipper’s soul. And that darkness bestows power even as it twists the flesh. You remember how the dead dvargir cast no shadow?” Gavin nodded. “That is one of the effects of the change. The dvargir can command shadows, but cast no shadows themselves.”
“And their eyes,” murmured Caius, his blue eyes distant with memory. “You will know at once if you look into the eyes of a dvargir. There is nothing but darkness there.”
Ridmark nodded. The Warden’s eyes had been like that.
“Darkness,” said Caius, his usual jovial air gone, “and an utter lack of mercy and conscience. The great void takes that as its price.” He looked at Morigna. “You might consider a lack of mercy to be strength, a virtue to be admired. But look into the eyes of a dvargir, behold his love of cruelty, and you will not know admiration. No, you will know only fear.”
Ridmark expected Morigna to react with scorn, but she said nothing. She had been subdued ever since leaving Coriolus’s cottage. The Old Man’s revelations had left her shaken. And perhaps seeing her mentor in a new light had cast doubt upon his teachings of strength and mercy.
“There are other changes,” said Calliande. “The void is a corruption. A dvargir man cannot father a child on a dwarven woman, nor a dwarven man with a dvargir woman. The same is true of the dark elves and the high elves.”
“So that would mean,” said Gavin, “if Sir Jonas worships Incariel, and Incariel is really the great void of the dark elves, then he’s become something like a…a human dvargir? Or a human version of a dark elf?”
“Perhaps,” said Calliande. “I don’t know. Apparently I have faced his sort of powers before…but not like this. He’s something new.”
“How,” said Morigna, “do you know all of this?”
“I don’t know,” said Calliande. “I must have learned it before I lost my memory. Otherwise I wouldn’t know it.”
“That makes absolutely no sense,” said Morigna.
“I cannot disagree with you,” said Calliande.
“Regardless of their nature, we should proceed,” said Ridmark. Standing before an entrance to the Deeps was not the time to discourse upon the history and nature of the dvargir. “If the dvargir are indeed responsible for the undead, I intend to stop them. Or at least warn Sir Michael and Abbot Ulakhur so they can defend the town adequately. Morigna, can you cast the spell to detect the dvargir?”
Morigna nodded and began gesturing, purple fire flaring around her hands. She raised her arms, and the fire pulsed and went out. As it did, she staggered a few steps, her eyes growing wide.
“What is it?” said Ridmark. “Did it work?”
“It did,” said Morigna. She pinched her nose. “But it is an…odd feeling. Like having ants crawl over my skin. I can sense where you are standing, your weight upon the earth. I am sure I will sense the dvargir, if they cloak themselves in shadow. Or Jonas, for that matter.”
“How far does the spell extend?” said Ridmark
Morigna’s face tightened, her eyes darting back and forth behind closed lids. “About…a hundred yards, I think.” She opened her eyes. “I do not know how well it will work underground.”
“Let us find out,” said Ridmark.
“I should walk with you, Gray Knight,” said Caius. “My kindred might have left traps in the tunnel, and I will recognize them. If the dvargir have set any traps, I have the best chance of spotting them.”
Ridmark nodded. “Very well. Morigna, on my left. Caius, on my right. Kharlacht and Gavin, keep your eyes open and your weapons ready. Calliande, keep your sensing spell active. If the dvargir raised the undead, they might have kept some as guardians, or their wizards…”
“Stonecasters,” said Caius.
“Their stonecasters might have left other wards,” said Ridmark.
Calliande cast her sensing spell as the others moved into place. Ridmark tapped his staff against the stony ground a few times, nodded to himself, and walked into the tunnel, the others following.
The darkness swallowed them, but it did not last for long. Patches of pale blue light glimmered upon the floor and walls. As they drew closer, Ridmark saw clusters of ghost mushrooms clinging to the stone, the pale light radiating from their luminescent caps. In the dim light he saw the distinct marks of dwarven stonework. The floor had been leveled, and a shallow trench followed the center of the tunnel, no doubt a culvert to drain water. From time to time he saw dwarven glyphs upon the wall.
“Milestones,” said Caius when he asked. “More or less. Humans use the mile of the old Empire of the Romans. Our equivalent unit of distance is called a strizahd, which is approximately one-fifth of a mile. The strizahd glyphs mark off the distance to the Stone Heart in the Three Kingdoms, the place where the dwarven kindred first entered this world.”
“That sounds complicated,” said Gavin.
Caius grinned. “More complicated than a mile? Marking off five thousand steps seems onerous, if you ask me.”
“Scholarly debates can come later,” said Ridmark, “once we are not approaching a dvargir stronghold in the Deeps.”
Both Caius and Gavin fell silent.
The tunnel sloped down, the strizahd-glyphs marking off the distance in regular intervals. The clusters of ghost mushrooms provided regular light, for which Ridmark was grateful. Deeper and wider the tunnel went, and Ridmark heard faint splashing in the distance.
An underground stream, perhaps, or a lake?
The tunnel opened into a large stone cavern, and Ridmark stopped for a moment to get his bearings.
The cavern was at least as large as the monastery’s courtyard. A rippling pond occupied its central half, and Ridmark saw the dull gleam of flickering lights within the waters. Thick clusters of ghost mushrooms, some as tall as small trees, encircled the water.
The façade of Thainkul Dural filled the cavern’s far wall.
It had been cut out of the living rock, with pillars and a fortified rampart for archers. The buttresses supporting the rampart had been carved in the shape of armored dwarven warriors, solemn and grim. A gleaming door of bronze-colored dwarven steel sealed the entrance, surrounded by deep-cut glyphs.
“There is a ward upon the gates,” said Calliande. “A powerful one.”
“Aye,” said Caius. “The stonescribes would have imbued the doors with the power of a lodestone to hold them in place. The doors are impervious to all but the most powerful attacks and spells.” He snorted. “It is often easier to tunnel through the surrounding rock than to go through a dwarven gate.”
“If the gates are sealed,” said Gavin, “then perhaps the stronghold is deserted. Maybe the final defende
rs locked themselves inside and died long ago.”
“That makes sense,” said Ridmark, “but it doesn’t explain the tracks.”
He gestured with his staff, squinting in the blue-lit gloom. Dry sand and silt covered the cavern floor, no doubt deposited whenever the tunnel flooded. Dozens of tracks marked the floor. Some of them had been left armored boots, others by clawed feet.
“What are those tracks?” said Morigna. “I’ve never seen anything like them.”
“Murrag,” said Ridmark. “A lizard.”
“Are they dangerous?” said Morigna.
“Not particularly,” said Ridmark. “Think of a fat, surly lizard the size of a sheep. The kindreds that dwell in the Deeps use them as herd animals.”
“Which means,” said Kharlacht, “the dvargir living within the stronghold must bring their murrags out here to graze upon the mushrooms every so often.”
“Or to catch fish,” said Ridmark, looking at the glowing fish in the pond. All the tracks led to and from the closed gates of dwarven steel in the carved façade.
“So,” said Gavin. “How are we going to get into Thainkul Dural?”
That was a very good question.
“I could break the spell upon the gates,” said Morigna.
“I fear that would accomplish little,” said Caius. “Even if you broke the spell, the gates themselves will remain locked, and we have no tool or spell to penetrate them. I suppose we could hammer them down, given enough time, or chisel through the surrounding stone, but the resultant noise would alert the dvargir within the fortress.”
“Aye,” said Ridmark, a thought rattling at the edge of his mind.
Why hadn’t they seen any guards? The dvargir were vicious and merciless, and with that came unrelenting paranoia. The dvargir never went anywhere without guards. Perhaps they trusted in Thainkul Dural’s gates to protect them from intruders. Yet that seemed unlikely. Perhaps a small party of dvargir had taken refuge in the abandoned ruin, and they did not have enough men to spare as sentinels.
Frostborn: The Undying Wizard Page 16
