The Tiger's Time

by Marc Alan Edelheit

  An unhappy hiss sounded in his mind. It emanated from Rarokan. Dog gave a low, menacing growl. Stiger removed his hands from both. Dog ceased his growling and set his head back down on Stiger’s thigh. The hissing died away as well, and a measure of the fatigue returned. The two clearly did not like each other.

  Father Thomas looked over at Stiger and regarded him for several heartbeats. The paladin’s gaze slid back to the dog.

  “There’s a very good chance he can understand everything you and I say,” Father Thomas said. “Naverum are reputed to be incredibly intelligent beings.”

  Stiger looked down. Dog gazed back up at him, raising his eyebrows, almost as if in question.

  “Can you understand me?” Stiger asked Dog.

  Dog just stared back at him with that same unblinking gaze. It was clear there would be no answer. After a moment he nudged Stiger’s hand, and when Stiger did not move, the animal nudged it yet again.

  Stiger absently resumed the scratching.

  I can hear you, Rarokan hissed in Stiger’s mind, sounding somewhat amused. And I can understand you as well.

  I know, Stiger said silently back at it, thoroughly unamused.

  Good, the sword said. Though I sleep deeply, know that I am always listening. You have but call to wake me, for I am ever with you. We are one.

  Stiger considered Rarokan’s words for a moment. Perhaps Rarokan might provide some answers?

  What god sent this naverum? Stiger asked. Was it Mars?

  To that question, I have no answer, the sword said. Stiger sensed a hesitation, as if Rarokan was deciding to share additional information. There was, Stiger felt, the mental equivalent of a shrug and then the sword spoke. I knew Survil, and Mars most definitely did not send his companion.

  Stiger continued to scratch Dog’s neck. Father Thomas, completely unaware of this side conversation, returned his gaze to the fire.

  I would recommend sending the naverum back. Rarokan sounded annoyed and somewhat disgruntled. But alas, I have come to the conclusion he won’t leave. He is here to stay, and we may as well accept it . . .

  We? Stiger asked.

  Now I must rest, for this communication has taxed me greatly. Feed me soon, rebuild my strength, for it is flagging.

  With that, Stiger felt the presence of the sword leave him once again, and with its departure came a vast relief. At the same time, he was troubled. Though he was supposedly the High Father’s champion, Stiger was feeling thoroughly out of his depth, and with each passing day it was not getting any easier.

  Stiger took a deep breath and turned his gaze to the fire. He did not want to be anyone’s champion and certainly did not feel like one. He let the breath out, shoulders sagging a little with exhaustion.

  “I will do what I’ve always done,” Stiger said softly to himself as he continued scratching Dog. “I will soldier on.”

  Father Thomas looked over at him. “That, my son, is why you are the perfect champion for our god.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Brogan, hands on his hips, surveyed the hulking door before him. Rusted hinges, each the size of Stiger’s fist, were attached to thick metal supports and bracings that ran down the seam of the backside of the stone door. A team of five dwarves waited expectantly just behind their thane.

  “Open it,” the thane ordered and stepped aside, moving over to stand by Jorthan.

  Two worked to lift the heavy locking bar at the bottom of the door. They grunted with the effort. It wouldn’t budge, as it had rusted together with the support. They stopped. One of the two gave it a good kick, and then again for good measure. The second kick seemed to work it free, as the bar rattled loose. They lifted it aside, setting the bar out of the way along the side of the passage.

  All five dwarves pulled, struggling to open the door. Grunting with effort, they strained. At first, nothing happened. The massive door refused to be budged. It was made of solid stone, yet that was not what seemed to hold the door in place. The door seemed so ancient that any oil lubricating the hinges had long since dried out, the corrosion cementing the moving parts in place.

  “Pull,” one of the dwarves shouted to the others. “Come on, lads! All together now, pull!”

  With a groan and a staggering screech, the ancient hinges gave a tad. Then the door began to open, first a sliver and then one painful half inch at a time. Dirt and dust cascaded down the seams as the opening became larger.

  Light from the outside world flooded into the tunnel, as did a distinctly warm breeze. The bar of light was so bright that Stiger and the others were forced to shield their eyes.

  The aroma of vegetation and moist, rich soil flowed inward, overcoming the musty smell of the underground. It reminded Stiger of what he had been missing these past few days—the outdoors. The smells triggered recollections of his time with Eli, traveling elven lands, moving through the forest, and learning the ways of the ranger. Stiger felt a pang for that long-ago phase of his life. He missed those simpler times, when everything had been neatly black and white.

  “A sight for sore eyes, sir,” Sabinus said to Stiger. “I can’t tell you how much I’ve missed the sky.”

  “It is,” Stiger agreed, glancing over at the centurion and then at the thane. Brogan was standing with Jorthan, speaking a few words. They were watching eagerly and with barely contained impatience. Father Thomas stood next to Sabinus. Dog, like a well-heeled animal, had sat down at Stiger’s side.

  The door seemed to screech madly, as if in horrible pain. The stone walls of the tunnel only served to magnify the sound to the point where it was almost excruciatingly loud.

  The tunnel that had led to this exit to the surface was sort of like a switchback, snaking its way down to the road below. It was just large enough for one wagon. As the door continued to screech and scream its way open, Captain Taithun and the front of the column waited patiently just behind them.

  Jorthan gave a nod to whatever the thane had said, and then Brogan stepped over to Stiger.

  “We had to take this side tunnel,” Brogan said, raising his voice to be heard over the screeching. “The main route into Garand Kos was intentionally collapsed long ago.”

  “On purpose?” Stiger glanced over at the thane.

  “Yes,” Brogan yelled. “When the decision was made to abandon the city, and the last of the population left, it was brought down. This door will let us out into the edge of the foothills, just on the outskirts of the city. It has been well-hidden and was built years after the evacuation.” Brogan glanced around the tight confines of the tunnel, lit by lamplight and now growing sunlight from the outside. “These days, as you can see, we use it only rarely.”

  Stiger nodded, wondering why the dwarves felt the need for a hidden entrance. But more importantly, he desired to know why the main tunnel had been collapsed. Clearly, they feared someone gaining access to their system of underground roads and tunnels. The question was, who? He figured it was likely the orcs.

  The screeching of hinges reached a crescendo, making further talk impossible. Covering his ears with the palms of his hands, he resolved to ask about it later when time permitted.

  Stiger turned back to the door. It continued to open, one very painful inch at a time, the dwarves straining under the effort. When it was wide enough for a person to pass, Brogan half turned and gestured for Stiger to follow.

  The thane stepped forth, with Stiger on his heels. It was the first time in three days Stiger had felt sunshine on his face. It was a wonderful feeling. The air was also much warmer.

  Stiger looked upward. The sky was near a perfect blue, with puffy white clouds scudding slowly along several thousand feet above. He looked downward at his feet. The soil was damp, almost muddy, which meant it had recently rained. A few colored leaves graced the ground, a sure sign that fall was upon them and also that they were at a higher elevation than they had been in the Vrell Valley, for the leaves there had yet to begin to turn.

  He squinted, allowing his eyes to fu
lly adjust, and then carefully studied his surroundings. They had emerged onto the side of what looked to be a steep hill. Behind them was a sheer rock face. The door had been set into it. It was clear there had once been some sort of a road that had traveled by this spot, snaking its way farther up the hill and out of sight. A few feet from the tunnel entrance, the road had become completely overgrown with brush, except where the last of the uneven paving stones impeded growth. It almost appeared as if the ground were slowly swallowing the stones, one at a time.

  “Garand Kos.” Brogan gestured expansively with both arms outward and into the distance. “A truly sacred place. Here your people and mine made their original mark upon this world. First City to both our peoples.”

  “First City,” Stiger breathed, head coming up. “Can it really be?”

  The side of the hill upon which they stood was part of a ridgeline that rose around three hundred feet above a large, flat, tree-filled expanse that stretched out for as far as the eye could see. An unending sea of trees spread out below them. The canopy of leaves was spattered with fall colors.

  About a mile distant, amongst the trees, lay the remains of what appeared to have once been a great city. Garand Kos was now thoroughly overrun by forest. A wide stone wall cut a line through the trees, encircling what Stiger took to be the city itself. In several places, sections of the wall had completely crumbled and collapsed. The battlements of the wall had been worn down and smoothed by weather and the ages. Inside the walls, the shells of hundreds of buildings could just be seen poking up above the trees. The tops of the walls or the columns that had supported roofing were all that was left. A few crumbling towers were still visible in the distance.

  Stiger’s eyes roved hungrily over the remains of the city. He figured from what he was seeing that it was large enough to have held nearly one hundred thousand people, perhaps even more. There was no telling how much the forest obscured of what had been outside the walls. For all he knew, there could have once been rolling farmland where now there were only trees.

  “That,” Sabinus said, coming up next to Stiger with Father Thomas at his side, “is something you really don’t see every day.”

  “Indeed,” Father Thomas said, excitement in his voice. “If this is First City, down there, somewhere, is the original temple on this world to the High Father. It was built on the orders of Amarra, High Priestess of the Faith.”

  “Amarra,” Sabinus said, shocked. “The original Amarra? Truly?”

  Father Thomas gave a nod.

  “It’s all down there, paladin,” Brogan said. “And my people helped yours construct that temple. We did it together, honoring the god instrumental in helping us come to this world.”

  Stiger shook his head slightly, somewhat at a loss for words. He was looking upon a city almost as fabled as Rome, something he thought he would never see. It was all incredible.

  “The City of Sout,” Father Thomas said. “This great city has been lost for ages.” Father Thomas’s eyes shone with excitement. His hands shook slightly. “We are truly blessed this day. My order has been searching for this holy place for ages. We knew it was somewhere in the South, but not where.” Father Thomas suddenly chuckled. “Truth be told, I still don’t know where we are.”

  “Having been underground for three days,” Sabinus said, “I’m all turned around too. Thane Brogan, you wouldn’t care to enlighten us?”

  “No,” Brogan said simply, “I would not. This city is sacred. It should not be disturbed or visited without good cause.”

  “I guess if word got out, treasure hunters would eventually come,” Stiger said.

  “That could not be tolerated,” Brogan said. “This city is now a tomb. Many of our people who came here from Tannis chose upon their deaths to return and be buried here. This door we just passed through is called the Grieving Gate.”

  “If the accounts of my order are correct,” Father Thomas said with a look over at Brogan, “this, my children, after arriving on this world, was the city our two peoples claimed as their own. Down there, somewhere, Karus built a shrine. Within it, he set the standard of the Ninth, entombing it for all time.”

  “Karus,” Sabinus said, “as in the first emperor? He was here?”

  “Oh yes,” Brogan said. “In a way, you could say the start of your empire began here, with the taking of this city.”

  “So, Karus did not build the city?” Stiger asked, looking over at Brogan. He wondered if the standard of the Ninth was still down there. It would be something to see, perhaps even to take back to the capital. He had a suspicion that to hunt for such a relic would be frowned upon by the dwarves and perhaps even the gods. The more he thought on it, the more he understood the Ninth’s standard would remain here. It was a holy relic and deserved, like the bodies of the ancestors, to not be disturbed.

  “No,” Brogan said, “he did not. The humans that lived here were called the Kelsey. When my people and yours arrived, the Kelsey proved hostile. Together our peoples crushed them and took their cities and lands for our own.” There was pride in Brogan’s tone. “It was an exciting time. I wish I had been alive to witness it.”

  “What happened to this city?” Sabinus asked. “Why abandon such a place?”

  “For a while,” Jorthan said, moving nearer, “our peoples lived in harmony. However, yours became, shall we say, restless. There were tensions between our peoples. A few short years after the conquest of the Kelsey, Karus decided to leave for new lands. The elves had a hand in his decision to leave us. Sadly, this ultimately led to the sundering of the Compact, the shattering of the alliance between our two peoples.”

  “Karus went off to found the empire, then,” Stiger surmised. Here was another reason for the dwarves to hold a grudge against the elves.

  “He did,” Jorthan said. “And in time my people, unaccustomed to living aboveground, also sought richer lands. Those few that were left behind could not long sustain the great works that made civilized life comfortable. With the passage of time, the roads, aqueducts, sewers, and baths all crumbled. Everything that civilization had delivered, within a few short years, fell into ruin.”

  “The few who still call these lands home,” Brogan added, “are scattered and isolated, living in small primitive forest villages, thoroughly ignorant of their great past or even, for the most part, of each other.”

  “I had an elf tell me once that with time, all things change,” Stiger said, feeling a keen sadness. “I would have very much liked to have seen this city in its prime, not as a mere shadow of its past glory, nothing more than an ancient and crumbling ruin.”

  Until recently, First City had been no more than myth. Stiger wondered if the same thing had happened to Rome. Was that city a ruin also? Was it a sad monument to a past age of grandeur and wonder?

  “Does the temple still stand?” Father Thomas asked of Brogan and Jorthan.

  “The remains of it should,” Jorthan said. He studied the city for a long moment and then pointed. “I believe it is out that way, toward the center, near what is left of Karus’s palace. See that crumbled spire there? That may be it. Our pioneers are expected to meet us here shortly. They should be able to give you more precise directions.”

  “That would be most welcome,” Father Thomas said fervently. “I want to see it.”

  Stiger glanced upward again and breathed in deeply. It certainly felt good to be back out under an open sky. Judging from the sun, he figured it was perhaps an hour past noon. Turning his eyes back to the forest, his thoughts darkened. He could not help but wonder what threats were hidden out there amongst its vastness. He blew out a slow breath. Like a cloud blocking the sun, a bad feeling had suddenly overtaken him. An army could be concealed amongst not only the ruins of the city, but the forest itself. Should the orcs mean them ill, things could go very badly. Then again, Brogan could be right and the threat minimal, but Stiger had long since learned to trust his gut. And his gut told him to be on his guard.

  Looking down upon
the dead city, any eagerness he had felt passed over to a deep, lingering concern. Stiger now felt anything but the excitement of Father Thomas, or the pride of Brogan at past accomplishments. The feeling of unease became more acute. He shook his head slightly, attempting to dismiss the feeling. Perhaps he was just overthinking things. After all, he had only ever faced orcs in battle. Never had he dealt with them as civilized beings, which, from what he had seen, he seriously doubted that they were or could ever be. Maybe that was what he was worried about, seeing the orcs for more than just heathen barbarians.

  Stiger turned and glanced back into the tunnel, as the screeching ceased. The door had been fully opened. Taithun, who had been speaking with one of his dwarves in the tunnel, stepped out, as did the first of the dwarves behind him. The captain’s eyes narrowed with the bright light. He walked with a confident swagger up to his thane. Taithun looked over Garand Kos.

  “It has been a long while since I set my eyes upon this place, My Thane,” Taithun said in dwarven.

  Brogan gave an absent nod, but said nothing. His eyes also ran over the city. Both seemed deeply moved.

  “I am growing old,” Taithun said, wiping at an eye. “It is good to have made this journey. It pleases me greatly to see this place one last time and does much to restore my spirit. I only wish I could live to see the restoration of the Compact as foretold by the Oracle.”

  Brogan looked over at his captain for a heartbeat. Stiger saw a tender fondness in the thane’s eyes that had not been there a moment before.

  “As do I. This place has special meaning for our people. I should require all of my chieftains to regularly visit,” Brogan said. “They fight and squabble like children over insignificant toys. Perhaps it will remind them of how we came to this world and why we are here.”