The Quest (The Hidden Realm Book 5)

by A. Giannetti

  “This explains the tailings by the overhang,” said Ascilius to Elerian. “Fodere and his people must have dumped the loose stone they mined there.” Returning to the page before him, he continued to read.

  “During this time, we saw no sign of the Trolls who attacked us during the migration from the west. I believe that they still avoid the valley for fear of the creature that slaughtered them and inadvertently saved my people. We have seen no sign of the creature either. My sons are of the opinion that we should attempt to recover the treasure that was lost in the passageway during the migration, but I will not allow it. The creature is only a legend to them, but I still remember the horror of it, and I will never enter that passageway while there is even a slim chance that the creature still haunts its dark recesses. I have asked Fronto, who is my eldest son and a gifted mage, to use his powers to construct a magical door for our dwelling to keep us hidden and safe if the creature or some other enemy should discover us.

  “Weeks of hard labor have passed since my last entry, but fortune has favored our efforts, for we soon found the gold which I sensed when I first passed through this place during the migration. We have also unexpectedly discovered a pocket of adamant behind the gold vein and have already mined enough of the rare gems to make us wealthy beyond our wildest dreams. A disagreement has now risen up among us. My wife and the wives of my sons wish to leave this dangerous place, but my sons favor remaining a bit longer to add to the wealth that we have already gathered. I am inclined to agree with my sons, for I doubt that we will ever return here once we leave this place.”

  Ascilius fell silent as he turned a page. He then began to read again.

  “Alas, we are undone by our greed for more treasure. The creature found us tonight. At last light, Fronto saw it at the entrance to the circle of stones which protect us when he went out to take in the evening air. It was too bulky to pass through the cleft so we are safe for now, but we will leave at first light if the sun drives the creature off.”

  “This journal will come to no good end,” predicted Ascilius grimly to Elerian before continuing to read.

  “We were unable to flee when the sun rose, for the creature remained hidden in the shadows by the entrance to the hollow. Protected from the sun’s light, it guards the exit so that we cannot leave. We are working furiously to construct a set of handholds that will enable us to scale the stone walls that imprison us, but it may take another day to complete them, for the creature slows our hands and legs with its evil influence as it watches us from the shadows. I believe it is digging near our mineshaft, for last night I heard noises there, as if something was scraping and tearing away the stone. If we survive the night, we will be free of this place and the creature, for we have only a few more steps to construct. Once we reach the top of the wall, we will use ropes to descend to the ground outside the hollow. We cannot take the gold that we mined, but the adamant will go with us.”

  “Here is the last entry,” said Ascilius to Elerian as he turned another page.

  “Alas, we are undone. The creature broke through the mine wall early this morning. It took Fronto when he went to investigate the noise, leaving us trapped here, for the front door is sealed with spells that only he had the power to lift. My other sons and I fought the monster, but our weapons have proved useless against it, for it has a strange flesh, smooth and hard as stone. It made no effort to slay us when we fought it. Instead it forced us to retreat to the last bedroom where we did our best to barricade the door against it.”

  “The rest is written in a shaking hand which I can hardly decipher,” observed Ascilius grimly to Elerian.

  “The creature’s purpose in keeping us alive has now become horribly clear. Each time it appears, it takes one of us, gloating over the rest before it departs. Its eyes are pitiless and cruel, promising unbearable suffering. Each new victim is carried into the mineshaft where he or she is slain slowly with great torment. Their screams echo constantly in my mind, especially those of the children. I am the last, so it will take me next, but I welcome death, for I cannot endure any longer the thought of the misery that I brought down on those dear to me. I curse the gold and my greed which drew me back here.”

  “Their fate would have been ours too, if you had not defeated the Gargol and closed its portal,” said Ascilius quietly to Elerian as he closed the book before him.

  “I wish that I had slain it instead of merely trapping it in its own world,” replied Elerian grimly. “There is no certainty that it will not find some way to return to our realm someday.”

  “You take too dim a view of things,” admonished Ascilius as he replaced the book in the chest. “Even if the creature survives the wounds that you gave it, the brief glimpse I had of its realm gave me the impression that it is a dying world where the Gargol must eventually perish now that you have closed the gate which allowed it to seek out new victims.”

  Leaving the chest and ledger on the table, Ascilius crossed the room to the ruined door that stood to the right of the fireplace. The stoic, enduring nature of the Dwarves had left him less affected by the sad tale of Fodere than Elerian. Thoughts of the riches that might lie in the mine beyond the doorway were now uppermost in his mind. With Elerian reluctantly following him, he entered the tunnel, which was about seven feet high and wide with rough-hewn walls. As he followed the excavation deeper beneath the valley floor, Ascilius’s mage light sparked golden glints from the walls on either side of him. Animatedly, he stopped to show Elerian one portion of the passageway where a wire of gold the thickness of a finger twisted through the rock.

  “This is a rich deposit,” he said, his dark eyes alight with excitement.”

  “I would not stay here to mine it if the walls around us were solid gold,” replied Elerian forcefully. “We should quit this place now.”

  “Not yet!” insisted Ascilius. He went on, caught up in the strong allure treasure had for the Dwarf race until he came to an opening on his left which debouched into a small room about eight feet square and seven high. His mage light revealed a white heap of bones piled up in the center of the room, each separated from the others as if something had systematically torn their owners to pieces. Most of the larger bones bore score marks, as if the flesh had been scraped off of them by some substance harder than bone.

  “The Gargol must have tortured and killed Fodere and his family in this very room,” thought Elerian grimly to himself, wondering again at the cruelty and ferocity of the creature.

  Beyond the bones, stacked against the far wall of the room, were dozens of golden bars about a foot long and four inches square. Untarnished by time, they gleamed in the dim rays of Ascilius’s mage light. Skirting the heap of bones, which seemed to affect him not at all, Ascilius picked up one of the bars in his right hand and tilted it, revealing a crest consisting of a pick and shovel crossed at the handles.

  “This device is the mark of an old house,” said Ascilius to Elerian, “but none of its members are left alive today. If we live through this adventure, we will return someday and share equally in the wealth gathered here. Added to what you discovered in the passageway and what Dardanus holds in trust for you, it will amount to a considerable amount of wealth.”

  The thought of more gold held little attraction for Elerian, especially gold gained through such great suffering. “We ought to leave it here,” he said to Ascilius. “It was cursed by Fodere and has his blood and that of his family on it.”

  “According to his own journal he was no mage, so his curses mean little,” replied Ascilius indifferently. “The suffering he and his kin endured is sad and unfortunate, but it is also over and done with. Turning our back on this treasure will in no wise change what happened here. It makes more sense to put the wealth he and his family mined to good use. Fodere himself would act no differently in our place.”

  “Count your gold then,” said Elerian with a shrug. “I would rather see how the creature gained entrance to the mine.” Leaving the treasure room, Elerian li
t his own small mage light before walking to the end of the mineshaft. There, he found a large opening in the right hand wall. The walls of the tunnel beyond it were covered by deep score marks and gouges, evidence that the Gargol had burrowed through the solid rock using only its stony hands and claws for tools. The far end of the short passageway was blocked with loose stone, as if the creature had pushed its tailings behind it as it forged deeper into the earth.

  “I see that the tunnel the creature dug is blocked,” observed Ascilius who had appeared behind Elerian’s right shoulder. “Once we seal the outer door, the treasure will keep until we return.”

  “You may return, but I will not,” thought Elerian grimly to himself as he contemplated for a melancholy moment the gloomy futures revealed to him by his orb.

  “Let us leave this place if you are done exploring it,” was all he said aloud to Ascilius.

  After he and Elerian climbed the stairs that led from the dwelling and stepped outside, Ascilius sealed the door again with a powerful closing spell. When they returned to their shelter under the slab the Dwarf went back to sleep, but Elerian spent a long time sitting beneath the overhang with his gaze fixed on the oily gem that he held in the palm of his right hand.

  “I have the means now to sway Ascilius,” he thought to himself, “but before I can begin that task, I must first discover the spells that will open a gate.” After depositing the gem in a pocket, Elerian extended his right hand, calling Dymiter’s spell book to him, for that seemed to be the best place in which to begin his search for the charms he needed. Instantly, a small brown book appeared on his upturned palm, the word Dymiter written on its cover in golden letters. When Elerian opened the book with his left hand, a familiar golden shade suddenly became visible to his magical third eye.

  “Why did you not come to me before?” silently demanded Elerian of Dymiter. “Anthea has been taken by the Goblins!”

  “I have grown weak and must husband my strength,” replied Dymiter sadly by casting his thought into Elerian’s mind. “I have come now only to release my book to you so that you may search it at will, for you may have need of it in the dark days that approach.” Dymiter's shade suddenly faded and the mage's voice grew faint, barely above a whisper. “My power fades Elerian. At most, I will be able to appear to you one more time. If the world changes and the time comes for the trees of Fimbria to be renewed, open my book and I will reveal the last of my secrets to you and Anthea.” Elerian sighed in frustration as the shade of the Elven mage vanished once more.

  “At least I now command his book entirely,” he thought to himself as he turned to the spell book in his hand. Free, now, to look anywhere in the volume, he turned page after page, searching for spells that dealt with portals and gates. He was disappointed, however, to find little mention of gates in the Elven mage’s book. If Dymiter had knowledge of such things, he had not recorded it on the pages of his spell book. As dawn broke, Elerian ended his search and sent the spell book away. “I will have to craft my own charm,” he thought to himself, wondering if he was clever enough to construct a spell that had evaded even the Gargol.

  After Elerian woke the company, Ascilius told everyone about Fodere and his demise as they ate a cold breakfast of biscuits and cheese. Cyricus and Cordus wanted to see the dwelling’s treasures with their own eyes, but Elerian was against the unnecessary delay. When Ascilius took his part, they broke camp as the first golden rays of the sun lightened the eastern horizon. By design, Elerian was the first through the cleft. He had the others wait while he examined the ground with his sharp hunter’s eyes, but he was unable to identify the faint prints left behind in the thick turf in front of the cleft.

  “Hooves like those of the Gargol would have cut into the ground, and we would have smelled a Troll,” he observed to Ascilius who stood nearby watching him examine the ground. “It may have been a bear or some other large hunter.”

  “Who knows?” replied the Dwarf with a shrug of his shoulders. “The Trofim and the forests which cover them reach all the way to the northern fells. No one alive knows all of the creatures that roam that vast wilderness. All we can do is to be as careful as possible as we proceed farther west.”

  After leading the rest of the company out of the cleft, Ascilius waited while Elerian cast a protective illusion over himself and his companions. Then, after a careful look around, he led his companions down the valley at a steady trot.

  TROLL COUNTRY

  At regular intervals during the day, Ascilius slowed his pace to a walk to allow his companions a bit of rest, but he called no real halt until a cluster of carriage-sized boulders with a large, flat slab resting on their crowns appeared on his right just as the sun began to drop toward the western horizon.

  “This looks to be a good place to spend the night,” he observed to his companions before leading the way toward the stones. Beneath the slab, Ascilius discovered a small cave with enough headroom for a Dwarf to stand. Several large gaps between the boulders supporting the stone roof evidently allowed a good deal of sunlight to reach into the cavity beneath the slab, for a thick carpet of turf covered the ground. Ascilius and his companions gratefully cast themselves down to rest on this verdant carpet, but Elerian strung his bow after setting aside his pack. He was in now wise tired, and had chafed all day at the slow pace that Ascilius had set. He had kept his impatience to himself, however, for he knew that neither Dacien nor Triarus was much used to running for an extended period of time. Ending his illusion spell, he stepped out into the thickening twilight outside the half cave, determined to bring fresh game to their table again before the light failed.

  The numerous hares that inhabited the valley had already come out to feed in the fading light. Without stirring from where he stood, Elerian brought down three of the plump, unwary creatures with his arrows, all of them expiring so quickly that their comrades continued to feed undisturbed around them. When Elerian approached to retrieve the hares he had slain, the rest retreated slowly and without panic before him.

  “They are not much used to two legged hunters,” thought Elerian to himself as he carried his catch a good distance from the cave sheltering his companions before skinning and cleaning it. When he returned to the campsite, it was full dark. His companions started and reached for their weapons when he passed between two of the boulders supporting the slab, for his light steps had given no warning of his approach.

  “You had best learn not to approach an armed camp so silently or it will cost you dearly someday,” grumbled Ascilius as he set Fulmen aside and sat down again.

  “It does seem a dangerous habit,” agreed Dacien disapprovingly as he sheathed Acer.

  “I think it more than worth the risk to see Ascilius’s hair stand on end,” replied Elerian with a gleam in his eyes. The Dwarf was about to make an irritated reply when he spied the hares that Elerian was carrying in his right hand.

  “I will take these in lieu of an apology,” he said, taking the fresh game into his own right hand. “Now go and find me some sticks.”

  When Elerian returned with three long pieces of driftwood the thickness of a finger, Ascilius happily spitted the hares and began roasting them over a small mage fire which he lit with a wave of his left hand. They had begun to brown nicely and emit a most tantalizing odor when a lizard like creature resembling a salamander suddenly appeared in the flames before the Dwarf. About a foot long, its sleek black hide was streaked with yellow markings that seemed to waver and twist, like the flames surrounding it. Seemingly impervious to the heat of the magical fire, the creature stared boldly up at Ascilius with its ruby eyes. The Dwarf started back in surprise at the sudden appearance of the creature, then gave a roar of outrage as it attempted to pilfer one of the roasting hares. Seizing the hare with his left hand, Ascilius drew his knife from his belt with his right hand and stabbed at the small thief, only to have the creature disappear before his steel struck home. When Ascilius withdrew his weapon, the lizard appeared in the fire again and renewed i
ts assault on the roasting hare. Elerian, who was sitting nearby, momentarily forgot the worries that weighed him down and smiled as an animated game of hide and stab now ensued between Ascilius and the strange creature. His third eye opened of its own accord, as it was wont to do in the presence of magic, revealing a brief, fiery circle in the fire each time the lizard appeared or disappeared.

  “That creature is traveling into and out of the fire through a portal,” thought Elerian to himself. “Is it hiding nearby or does it somehow sense the flames from afar, I wonder?” Before he could satisfy his curiosity any further, the contest between Ascilius and the lizard abruptly ended after it finally succeeded in tearing a foreleg from a roasting hare. With its succulent prize clamped firmly in its mouth, it disappeared and did not return.

  “We had best eat before the creature returns with all its family and friends to pilfer the rest of our meal,” said Ascilius to his companions in an irritated voice.

  “If you put out your fire, I do not think it will be able to find its way back,” advised Elerian. His guess proved right, for after Ascilius extinguished his mage fire, they were able to enjoy their meal without interruption. Later, after his companions sought out their blankets, Elerian sat down between two boulders just inside the shelter provided by the slab, staring out into the night and thinking about Anthea. He found that his former frantic impatience to reach her side had transmuted into grim acceptance of the future that was inexorably bearing down on him, calming him almost to the point of detachment, for what use was it to struggle or worry if his future was fixed and inevitable.