The Quest (The Hidden Realm Book 5)

by A. Giannetti

  “He believes as I do that the creature is still lurking out of sight in the darkness around us,” thought Elerian pessimistically to himself. He kept his thoughts to himself, however, not wishing to discourage the others.

  To the disappointment of all the company, the heaviness that had slowed their movements earlier returned in full force before they had progressed much farther into the cavern. Elerian felt that his limbs had turned to stone and that the pack on his back had become an enormous burden. With each step that he took, his leaden feet pressed heavily against the stone floor of the cavern, a heavy burden for one who was used to moving effortlessly across the ground. His companions were no better off as they all stubbornly followed Ascilius, shuffling their heavy feet and pushing through air that seemed to have grown thick as mud. By the time the six companions finally reached the far side of the cavern, each of them was drawing in great gulps of air and sweating heavily, as if they had run many miles with a great burden on their backs.

  “We are doomed,” groaned Triarus despairingly when Ascilius’s lantern revealed a blank wall of stone in front of them. “We shall wander in circles through this cavern until we are too weak to resist the creature that afflicts us with its malicious will.”

  “What have we gotten ourselves into?” muttered Cyricus to his brother. The exhausting trek through pitch darkness had sapped their earlier confidence, bringing home to them for the first time how dangerous was the quest they had so nonchalantly embarked on.

  “The exit cannot be far,” Ascilius said reassuringly to Triarus and his cousins. “I have lost my bearings a bit in the darkness is all. Rest a little and try to regain some your strength while I continue to search for an exit.”

  “We will need another light if Ascilius leaves,” thought Elerian to himself. Reaching into his pack, he found another lantern which he quickly filled and lit. As his companions gathered into a circle around Elerian’s lantern, sitting or lying on the cave floor to gain what rest they could, Ascilius laboriously searched along the wall of the cavern, angling off to the right of the company. At his sudden shouted summons his companions climbed heavily to their feet and shuffled to his side. Several hundred feet to the right of their original line of travel, the persistent Dwarf had discovered an exit to the cavern.

  When the company followed Ascilius down the passageway that he had found, the heaviness suddenly left their limbs, but their relief at being able to walk normally was short-lived. This new tunnel, which varied from ten to thirty feet in width, quickly presented them with a new threat, for Ascilius’s and Elerian’s lanterns now revealed many holes, some of them quite large, in the irregular stone walls of the passageway. Ascilius was forced to approach each dark opening with great care, lest the creature which had attacked Elerian earlier spring out at them to either assail the company or to drag one of their number away.

  Nerves on edge, the six companions plodded stubbornly on, only to face a new affliction. Clutching Fulmen tightly in his right hand, the lines of argentum inlaid in the steel hammer head gleaming brightly, Ascilius suddenly stopped, certain that he glimpsed the fanged maw of a water horse ready to snap at him from an opening on his left. Behind him Dacien started when he saw the bestial form of a savage mutare ready to spring out at him from the same opening. Cordus and Cyricus raised their weapons, certain that they saw the coarse face of a Troll leering at them from the darkness behind them as it reached out its massive hands to seize them. Triarus saw gloating Goblin faces in the dark and Elerian saw once again the half-human, half-bestial form of Drusus ready to spring on him from an opening on his right. As the daunting visions faded, a series of menacing sounds issued from the dark recesses of the passageway. The dry rustle of scales, the click of claws on stone, and the drawing of heavy breaths, all seemed to portend an imminent attack, further fraying the nerves of the six companions. Elerian gripped his weapons as tightly as the rest, but when he opened his third eye and looked all around him, he failed to see the telltale light of a single shade.

  “What I saw must have been a phantasm, for Drusus died many years ago,” he reminded himself. “Our hidden enemy must have drawn the image from my mind.” Looking about at his companions, all of them standing tensely with drawn weapons, Elerian guessed that they had seen apparitions of their own that were equally troubling to them, for Ascilius was grim faced and next to him, Triarus was sweating freely, shaking all the while as if he had a fever. Cordus and Cyricus were pressed against each other for comfort and even Dacien, who was as fearless as any man could be, had a haggard look on his face.

  “Bless Ascilius and his foresight in bringing the lanterns,” thought Elerian grudgingly to himself. “Who knows what would have happened if we had endured this assault on our minds in the dark? The visions each of us has seen are difficult enough to endure even in the light.”

  “The things that you have seen are not real,” said Elerian reassuringly to his companions. Sheathing his sword he walked lightly to the front of the company. The illusion concealing him fell away, revealing features fair beyond mortal kind. From his youth, Elerian had habitually masked his voice as well as his face and form lest it give him away to his enemies, but he began to sing quietly now, a simple, sprightly song from his youth sung to mark the advent of spring. The clear, silvery notes that he raised exerted a powerful influence on the minds of his companions. The darkness seemed to recede and it seemed to each of them that a warm breeze blew through the passageway, chasing away the clammy scent of cold stone and filling it, instead, with the scent of green growing things. Their hearts and their limbs both lightened, the members of the company followed him fearlessly down the passageway.

  It was difficult to mark the passage of time or distance in the dark, but Elerian thought they had covered almost a quarter mile when he began to see discarded gear on the floor of the tunnel, gear that Dardanus’s people must have abandoned in their flight from the Trolls. Eventually, the passageway came to an end, bringing the company to the brink of another great open space. Elerian ceased to sing then and turned to Ascilius.

  “You must lead the way now. I will lose my way in this great open place,” he said quietly to the Dwarf. Ascilius made no answer, for it seemed to him that any time he and Elerian spoke the hostilities between them were renewed. Nodding his head in agreement, he took Elerian’s place at the head of the company. His upraised lantern revealed a tangle of bones of various sizes and shapes on the floor of the cavern ahead of them as well as the rusted remains of armor and various weapons of war. Ascilius examined the detritus of battle carefully.

  “This must be where my uncles fought their last battle against the Trolls,” he proclaimed to his companions. “It means that we are drawing close to the exit to the passageway.” Turning to his cousins he said quietly, “If any of us return to Iulius, an expedition must be sent here to recover the bones of our people and to give them a proper burial.”

  “We will all three of us return here together, cousin, to accomplish that noble task,” Cyricus assured Ascilius, his courage restored by Elerian’s singing and the thought that they were nearing the end of the passageway. Elerian, however, was not as confident as Cyricus that they would see daylight again.

  “The future is mutable,” he reminded himself. “Despite the scene shown to me by my orb, some or all of us may still leave our bones here in this cavern as did Ascilius’s ancestors, for I have a strong premonition that the creature inhabiting the dark recesses around us is not done with us yet. If it fails to stop us with magic, I think it likely that it will resort to violence again.”

  When Ascilius and his companions set off across the chamber, Elerian followed, stepping carefully so as not to disturb the bones of the dead. The silence surrounding the company now seemed doubly deep, for Elerian did not resume his singing. The spell he had woven with his voice had tired him greatly, and he thought it better to conserve his strength now, for his limbs, as well as those of his companions, now grew heavier again as the baleful
influence of their hidden enemy’s will made itself felt once more, forcing them to walk with slow, plodding steps.

  “Lord, can you not sing again?” asked Triarus shyly of Elerian. “Your voice made our hearts and feet lighter.”

  “All magic has its price, Triarus,” replied Elerian in a weary voice. “I must rest for a time to replace the power that I have expended.” Disappointed in his answer, the members of the company trudged on, but they did not go far before Ascilius abruptly stopped and turned to face his companions.

  “Can any of you tell which way is west?” he asked worriedly.

  “I can no longer tell one direction from another,” replied Cordus fearfully.

  “Nor can I,” said Cyricus. “How can a Dwarf be lost underground, Ascilius?” he asked, his voice full of confusion.

  “I am not sure, cousins,” replied Ascilius, trying to keep the unease out of his voice lest it alarm the others. He looked toward Elerian who also shook his head no, a grim look on his face. “I fear that the creature which seeks to slow our steps has found a way to muddle and confuse our sense of direction, too,” said Ascilius somberly to his companions. “Close your eyes, all of you. I am going to send up a mage light to see which direction we must travel in.” Shutting his own eyes, Ascilius raised his right hand. A golden sphere, invisible to anyone who did not possess mage sight, shot up the ceiling of the cavern. As it began to blossom into a fist-sized mage light, it vanished as suddenly as it had appeared so that only darkness met the eyes of the company when they opened them again. Twice more Ascilius attempted a light before giving up.

  “Try your luck, Elerian,” he said quietly. Elerian raised his right hand, casting the spell that would create a mage light, but he fared no better than Ascilius. His magical light died above his head before it was fairly born.

  “It would seem that the creature pursuing us is determined to have us travel in the dark,” he said dourly to Ascilius. “Luckily, we have a signpost to guide us in the bones of the dead. We have only to follow them to find our way out of this chamber.”

  “Trust his quick wits to see what the rest of us cannot,” thought Ascilius, instantly upset that he had missed such an obvious solution to their problem. “Let us go on then, he replied, grown confident again despite the obstacles placed in their path by their invisible enemy. Following the white gleam of bones and the dull flash of rusted, dusty armor revealed by his upraised lantern, he resumed walking in what he hoped was the right direction. Gradually, Ascilius sank into a fog of weariness, but he stubbornly continued to place one heavy foot in front of another until Dacien abruptly spoke up behind him, his voice sounding both weary and drawn.

  “I must rest a bit, Ascilius. Dwarves must be hardy folk indeed not to feel the weariness that has soaked into my bones.”

  “We are all tired, whether we say it or not,” Ascilius replied, his voice equally fatigued. “Let us stop here for a bit to rest and to eat and drink.” In an open space free of the great pointed shafts of stone that grew out of the floor of most of the cavern all but Elerian sank wearily to the ground, facing out into the dark as they sat in a circle in the small pool of yellow light cast by the two lanterns. Elerian was as weary as the rest, but a sense of impending danger kept him on his feet, Acris ready in his right hand. Several times as his companions rested and ate, he saw, with his mage sight, a flicker of motion in the darkness around them.

  “If this is a living creature, I should be able to see its shade, not just bits of movement,” thought Elerian perplexedly to himself. “Is there a shade which sheds no light?” he wondered. He had never heard of such a thing, but he could think of nothing else to explain the ability of their enemy to mask itself from the view of his magical eye.

  “How much farther do you think we have to go?” Elerian asked Ascilius, his voice carefully neutral, for like the Dwarf, he had no wish to stir up any more trouble between them.

  “I cannot tell because of our slow pace,” replied Ascilius wearily. “Walking at our normal pace, we should have reached the end of the passageway already, for it is not above ten miles from one end to the other.”

  Ascilius fell silent and soon, in spite of their dangerous situation, he and his companions fell asleep, except for Elerian who resisted the urge to close his eyes lest the creature hounding them attack the company while they all slept. Muted by the deep breathing of his companions, he suddenly heard the faint pad of bare flesh on stone somewhere behind him, causing him to spin around instantly with his sword upraised. As something small and dark sprang at him out of the gloom beyond the lantern light, Elerian brought his sword down on the creature’s head, but it twisted sinuously away and back from the bright blade, so that Acris’s point scored the right side of its chest instead of striking the crown of its head edge on. Again, as steel made contact with the creature’s flesh, Elerian felt a sudden shock which jarred his hand and arm, as if he had struck stone, but the sudden, high-pitched screech of rage that tore asunder the silence of the cavern, assured him that Acris had cleaved living flesh.

  Behind Elerian, the shriek emitted by his attacker brought Ascilius and the rest of his companions leaping to their feet as if stung by fire. As Elerian raised Acris to strike again, Ascilius looked wildly about him with his hammer clenched in his right hand and his lantern raised high in his left. Next to him, Dacien and Triarus stood with swords clenched in white knuckled fists, staring about them in confusion. Cyricus and Cordus stood back to back, their axes grasped in shaking hands. As Acris began its shining descent, Elerian saw his attacker dart away into the darkness beyond the lantern light, never more than an indistinct shadow to his eyes on account of its great speed and the gloom which seemed to cloak it.

  “What was that noise?” demanded Ascilius of Elerian, looking both wild eyed and dazed from his sudden awakening.

  “Something attacked me again,” replied Elerian who was none too clear in his own mind on account of the power Acris had drained from him so suddenly. He examined the tip of his blade where black blood stained the bright steel. “I injured it again, but I do not think the wound was serious. The creature in no way resembled the monster described by Dardanus. I did not get a clear look at it, for it moved too quickly, but I would say it was about the size of a Dwarf.”

  “Let me try again to reveal it,” said Ascilius raising his left hand. A fist-sized mage light blossomed near the ceiling of the chamber as he cast his charm, thrusting back the darkness surrounding the company. Nothing extinguished the light this time.

  “Look there!” shouted Cordus and Cyricus together, both of them pointing to a small, hunched over figure, standing barely thirty feet away from them. The stranger’s identity was not readily apparent, for form and features were both obscured by a dark cloak whose hood was drawn low, obscuring the face behind it. Apparently startled by the light which had so suddenly exposed it, the mysterious figure turned and scuttled away toward the north end of the cavern.

  “A Dwarf!” shouted Ascilius in surprise. “He must have mistaken us for enemies! Wait!” he cried. “Do not run away. We mean you no harm!” Despite his assurances of their peaceful intentions, the hunched over figure did not slow, continuing instead to scurry away between the stalagmites that covered the floor of the cavern. At that moment, a sudden conviction took hold in Ascilius’s mind that he had found one of the missing scouts sent by Dardanus to explore the passageway. Such was the fervor of his conviction that it never occurred to him to wonder how an old Dwarf could run so quickly or how he could have survived at all for so many years in this dark and dangerous place.

  “I must reach him before he disappears again,” thought Ascilius to himself. At that moment, his mage light was suddenly extinguished, plunging the cavern into darkness again. Undeterred, forgetting all else, Ascilius snatched up his lantern. Before any of his startled companions could lift a hand to stop him, he bolted after the stranger, so obsessed with reaching the small figure running away from him that he failed to notice that th
e heaviness and weariness that he had experienced in his limbs before had both vanished. With his body restored to its natural state, Ascilius fairly flew across the stony floor of the cavern. Traveling in great bounds, he soon came in sight of the little cloaked form that he was pursuing, but despite his best efforts, he was unable to close the last small gap between himself and the stranger, who stayed remained just out of his reach.

  Standing in the small pool of light cast by the second lantern, Elerian was the first of the company to recover his wits after Ascilius’s abrupt and unexpected departure.

  “Come back!” he shouted, for he did not share Ascilius’s belief that the stranger was a Dwarf. “No Dwarf was ever as hard and stony as that creature you pursue.”

  If Ascilius heard Elerian’s warning, he paid it no mind, instead continuing his determined pursuit, his wildly bouncing lantern casting wild shadows all around him as each stride that he took carried him farther away from his companions, into darkness and danger from which he might not ever emerge alive.

  THE GATE

  “I must follow him while I can still see his light,” said Elerian to his companions as Ascilius’s light continued to recede into the distance. “Once he disappears from sight, it may be impossible to find him if something happens to him out there.”

  “Go then,” urged Dacien. “The rest of us will wait for you here.”

  “Do not let the lanterns go out,” said Elerian to Dacien as he shed his pack. “I will leave you Acris, for ordinary weapons will be useless against the creature that attacked me earlier.”

  “You may need the sword more,” protested Dacien, but by then Elerian had already forced the Acris’s hilt into his left hand. Without another word, Elerian darted after Ascilius whose bobbing mage light continued to recede into the distance. With his first stride, he found that the weight was gone from his feet, and that he was now able to light a mage light to illuminate his path.