Ancient Ruins (Ancient Dreams Book 1)

by Benjamin Medrano

  “Well, we’ve got two options. One is to try drilling a well. We’d want to get an earth or water mage to give us an idea of where would be good.” Graystone pondered a moment, then shook his head. “The other is to use that rockslide to our advantage.”

  “What do you mean by that?” Evansly asked, slightly dubiously as he thought about the masses of rubble up the ravine. They were building the town out of the way of the worst potential landslide zones, and Graystone had gone up the nearby mountainsides to check them and make certain that they didn’t appear likely to collapse sometime soon.

  “I’m thinking that we could build a reservoir and dam. Use the water for an aqueduct and to power a wood mill or the like.” Graystone explained. “All that rubble is broken up, so it isn’t perfect, but there’s enough to make a decent dam with some good mortar. I’m not saying it’ll be the best structure ever, but depending on how much work we want to put into it, we could even try stocking it with fish.”

  “That seems like a lot of work, Graystone.” Evansly frowned slightly, tilting his head. “I’m not sure how long that would take, and I’m not sure how long you’re supposed to be out here.”

  “It would take a while, that much I’ll admit. An easier task would be diverting some of the stream through an aqueduct, which would be simple enough. Could be done by fall, I’m sure.” Graystone offered, tilting his head as he considered. “And I wasn’t given a specific timeline, really. It’s a project I enjoy.”

  “Hmm…” Evansly looked at a map of the area and debated for a minute. The map was next to a stack of sketches of the buildings that Graystone was going to be supervising the construction of. He was looking forward to having a proper office in the barracks where he could store all of this. After a few minutes he nodded. “I’d like you to start on the aqueduct idea, if you would. And if you’d also draw up plans for two or three dam projects, so that I have some options to pitch to the Adjudicator? I’ll see if he wants us to build a dam instead. Better yet, if you can incorporate the aqueduct into any potential dam it might be even better. That way we don’t waste effort.”

  “I’ll do that. I’ll get started right away on these dam projects.” Graystone replied with a grin, and they both chuckled at the play on words.

  * * *

  Helia took a deep breath as she crept toward the entrance to the caverns. She was on a mission to find Sistina and see if there were any other ways into the mountain, now that there was a Kelvanis force outside the only entrance they knew of. Helia was one of the guards who’d been with Princess Phynis on their ill-fated expedition and been branded, and thus she knew Sistina at least a little, which Desa obviously hoped would be enough for Sistina to recognize her. Besides which, Helia was the only person who’d met Sistina and also had enough skill at stealth and light magic to hide herself from the guards that were watching the cavern entrance.

  So Helia drew on her magic gently, wrapping herself in a bubble that would make her blend into the background. She slowly moved forward toward the cavern entrance, moving just slowly enough that most people wouldn’t be able to see the distortion in the air surrounding her body, but just fast enough that she wouldn’t run out of mana before she reached the cave.

  One step at a time, she passed through the clearing around the cave. The two human guards were drinking cups of something hot as they chatted. They didn’t seem too worried about anything coming out of the cavern, she noticed hopefully. That would help her make it inside without incident. And then she was past them, inside the cave.

  Dropping her spell as she hid around a corner, Helia let out a breath of relief and took a few moments to catch her breath and calm down. Then she straightened and started to follow the path she remembered from a few weeks before. Hopefully she remembered the route correctly.

  * * *

  For a moment Sistina was afraid she was about to get raided, and this time in major force. Worse, she still wasn’t ready for a group that was prepared for both her animals and plants. Oh, certainly, she could probably deal with any interlopers if they got to her, but that wouldn’t help Ilmas, Lily, or Sina if they got caught too far from her.

  So Sistina was surprised, then delighted when she realized that the person who had come inside was actually an elf with a slave brand who was entirely on her own. And she grew even more surprised when she looked more closely and found that she recognized the woman who’d entered the tunnels. The woman had been with Phynis when she’d come through before, so Sistina looked closely at her link to Desa for the first time in a long while and was startled to find that the faint connection had grown stronger again, indicating that the elven mage was nearby once more.

  On the other hand, Sistina had been working on making the tunnels more complex since the prior invasion, so the elven guard was heading toward the tunnels leading downward instead of toward her cavern. And since she didn’t want to send the woman on a trip through her new caves, Sistina mentally sighed and got to her feet with a wince. She hadn’t moved in a touch too long, but she’d just have to go fetch the woman herself.

  * * *

  Pausing in a tunnel, Helia’s frown deepened. She would have sworn that this was the right direction, but she didn’t recognize where she was at all. She remembered the route clearly, and they had discussed it back in camp, and yet the tunnels didn’t seem to match at all. She murmured softly. “What’s going on? I shouldn’t be going down at all.”

  The sudden echo footsteps caused Helia to tense, spinning around and her sword hissing out of its sheathe, glowing with a faint blue light. A few moments later the pale form of Sistina stepped out of the gloom, this time wearing delicate pair of green trousers and blouse. Seeing her, Helia relaxed slightly and shook her head as she sheathed her blade.

  “You startled me, Sistina. I was coming to see you, but I seem to have gotten lost somehow. I thought I knew the way, but obviously not.” Helia told the dryad with a sheepish shrug. “Sorry that you had to come get me.”

  Sistina smiled and shook her head, then touched one of the cavern walls, and spoke in her usual curt manner. “Moved.”

  “You moved your cavern?” Helia asked, her eyes widening in shock. Her discomfort eased slightly as she noticed that Sistina also seemed startled by the thought, and shook her head in response.

  “Intruders.” Sistina told her, pointing back down the tunnel. Pausing as if trying to think of how to explain, Sistina eventually added, her tone slightly questioning. “Maze?”

  “Uh...you made this place a maze? That seems...well, it makes sense. Why?” Helia asked. Sistina gestured for her to follow, and the elf followed her.

  “Dungeon.” Sistina said simply, shrugging slightly. “Safer.”

  And wasn’t this a fine situation for her to bring the princess into, Helia reflected grimly. A new dungeon under siege by the army of Kelvanis? Well, at least they didn’t know that Phynis was here. Yet, anyway.

  * * *

  “Hello the camp!” The soft voice made Desa tense for a moment before she managed to relax, recognizing the voice.

  “Helia? Are you alright?” She asked softly, looking into the darkness around their camp carefully. There was no telling whether or not the guard had been caught and subverted, but she wasn’t seeing or hearing anyone else as of yet. Helia emerged from the darkness looking slightly tired.

  “Right as rain, though the situation is weird. Apparently, according to Lily and the other two slaves inside, Kelvanis thinks the caverns are a dungeon. So they’re building a town to exploit it, and Sistina is spending almost all her time rebuilding caverns system to try to make herself into an actual dungeon.” Helia explained, shaking her head in obvious disbelief. “Apparently she’s been rather distant since this whole mess started. But she met me and guided me through the dungeon.”

  “That’s not good. In fact, it’s bad. Is there any way to get past the guards?” Desa’s worry spiked, looking at her large group. “There’s no way we can fight our way past them. They’
d be in right after us if we tried, and there’s just too many of them.”

  “Well, fortunately Sistina made a second cavern exit on the rear side of the mountain that’s easy for her to open. She made it for Lily and the others.” Helia replied with a wry smile. “She has to open it and shut it each time, to make sure their scouts don’t find it, but if we go there we can get in easily. That’s how I got out.”

  “Oh, that’s a relief.” Desa let out a soft sigh as her tension eased enormously. “I didn’t know what we could do aside from turning around and going back. And that hardly bode thinking on. What if Kelvanis managed to get their hands on the library in there?”

  “Agreed.” Helia told her, sighing as she asked. “Any way I could get a nap before we leave?”

  Laughing softly, Desa smile and nodded. “Go ahead and get some rest. We’ll head inside in the morning.”

  “Thanks, Captain. I’m exhausted.” Helia murmured, then headed for her tent.

  “You’re welcome, Helia. Thanks for going in there. You’re a lifesaver.” Desa said affectionately, then headed toward bed herself. She’d been waiting for Helia to get back, and the good news would help her sleep. Things were definitely looking better than they had been this afternoon.

  Chapter 29

  Desa found herself startled by the simplicity of the new entrance to Sistina’s cavern. Compared to the other route they’d taken before, this one was positively straightforward. The shallow cavern hadn’t looked like there was any way out of it until one stone wall had literally melted away into an open doorway. The hall wasn’t terribly wide or tall, but unlike all of the other caves, this one was well paved and the walls and ceiling looked like a properly reinforced tunnel or hallway. Even more useful, it didn’t twist and turn nearly as much, and it took them directly down to Sistina’s main cavern.

  As she stepped into Sistina’s cavern, Desa stepped to the side so that she would be out of the way of the others, then took a deep breath. The air was rich with scents of plants, and a faint tension that she hadn’t even noticed was there slowly eased. The mana-rich air would also do her a world of good, and she took another deep breath before opening her eyes and examining what she could see of the cavern while the others filed out of the tunnel. The exclamations of the researchers was amusing and unsurprising, but she managed to ignore them in spite of their antics.

  Some of the trees were bigger, but she could have sworn that the layout of the forest and other gardens had changed since they’d last been there. It was hard to tell if they had, though, since she’d come in from a different angle from the previous visit. If she could change the layout of the tunnels and caverns, why couldn’t she change where plants were, anyway? It was certainly possible that she had.

  Lily’s house looked slightly larger and the fields looked mostly the same, though the sight of wheat startled her somewhat. The millhouse along the stream, at a point where the water tumbled downward a dozen feet of rocks, was also new, even if it looked like it’d been in place for years. More surprising was the realization that most of the buildings she’d seen along the edge of the cavern on the previous visit were gone, and where they’d been were only a handful of buildings that seemed to be fully intact.

  “Helia, did it look this different when you came through?” Desa grabbed the other woman’s shoulder as she was about to come past, nodding toward the buildings.

  Helia blinked for a moment, then her eyes lit up with understanding. “Ah, yes, mostly. I don’t think all of them were in quite that good of shape, though. I could have sworn that part of the big building’s roof was missing.”

  “Well, that makes me feel a little better.” Desa shook her head slightly and smiled slightly. “I was afraid that I was misremembering the cavern. Or that Sistina had done all of that overnight. And the roof probably was damaged. I’m not entirely sure why she bothered fixing it, though, since we’re inside a cave.”

  “That’s a good point. Maybe to allow people to avoid the ‘daylight’ from the crystals?” Helia suggested, pointing up at the lights on the ceiling of the cavern. “I certainly hope she isn’t planning to try to replicate rain.”

  “That’s true, but we could also-” Desa paused, then smiled as she saw Lily approaching, along with a plain-looking male dusk elf. The male looked nervous at seeing the large group, but Lily approached with a smile. “And here’s someone who might be able to answer such a pressing question for us?”

  “I suppose so.” Helia shook her head and laughed.

  “What question?” Lily asked, obviously slightly puzzled. But as soon as she was close, Lily grinned and gave Desa a tight hug, startling both the captain and most of those nearby. “Welcome back, Captain Desa! It’s good to see you again.”

  “Thank you, Lily. And whom might this be?” Desa asked, turning her gaze to the man.

  “Oh, this is Ilmas. He was part of the first scouting group of the soldiers outside, and fell into a pitcher plant.” Lily replied, grinning as he blushed faintly pink in spite of his somewhat darker pigmentation. “Sistina rescued him and adjusted his brand, like mine. And Sina’s, but she’s off hunting for a deer so we have a better dinner. He’s my boyfriend.”

  “I suppose that makes sense. But the question I was discussing with Helia was simple enough. We were curious as to why Sistina bothers adding roofs to the buildings indoors.” Desa told her, smirking a little as Ilmas turned an even brighter shade of pink as he was introduced as Lily’s boyfriend. The two elves were somewhat mismatched. Ilmas was not the most handsome elf by any stretch of the imagination, while Lily was pretty enough that she would draw attention in most small towns. Which actually made them all the more adorable in her eyes, since they were living here, of all places.

  “That’s a good question. That’s a really good question.” Lily frowned slightly, then shook her head after a moment. “I don’t know.”

  “And trying to get an answer out of Sistina is like pulling teeth.” Ilmas added, shrugging as they looked at him, his feet shifting uncomfortably. “I mean, since she doesn’t talk normally, so it makes it hard to get details on subjects like that. When she even answers us.”

  “Has she stopped talking to you?” Desa frowned at that, looking at Lily. And she was surprised to see the elf look slightly guilty. What was going on?

  “That...it’s complicated, you know? I mean, remember that she didn’t say a single word after telling me her name through the entire winter until you came here.” Lily slowly explained, shifting from one foot to the other uncomfortably. “So I’m not saying she’s stopped talking to us. She’s actually talking more than she was. But she’s been more distant. Before she was constantly nearby me. Or maybe I went near her because I was lonely. Either way, she was a constant presence. And now she moves away from her tree maybe once a week. Sometimes when I go looking for her, she doesn’t move at all for hours on end. I’m worried about her.”

  “And she’s shifting the tunnels around, too.” Ilmas added, frowning. “I’m not entirely sure why, but she’s not letting us go very far. I have to assume that the Kelvanis presence outside is making her nervous. When we want fresh air, we have to go out the exit you used, and she’s refused to open it a few times.”

  “I’ve told you, I’m betting that those times there were Kelvanis scouts in the area around the exit.” Lily interjected, giving Ilmas an annoyed look.

  “I’m just trying to explain what’s been going on!” He protested. “It isn’t like they’ve been here to watch.”

  “That does seem like a reasonable explanation, though.” Desa interjected, shrugging slightly. “Still, it makes me wonder about what she’s up to.”

  She was about to say more, but then she paused as she saw that Phynis had quietly slipped past most of the group and was heading toward Sistina’s tree, with Evrial just behind her, looking around watchfully. Helia noticed a moment later, and her voice was soft. “Captain, should I…?”

  “No. No, let her go see Sistina herself.�
�� Desa refused gently, shaking her head. “Maybe she can get through to the princess.”

  “Wait, isn’t that the princess? What’s she doing here?” Lily asked, startled as she looked over after Phynis as she circled a bush. “I thought that the reason all of you were moving so quickly was to get her out of the country.”

  “It is, and the situation is complicated.” Desa spoke softly, shaking her head. “She’s lost a lot of trust for others.”

  “She was attacked back home, by a slaver. Only the fact that the Captain’s brand was changed by Sistina kept him from succeeding.” Helia explained, shrugging slightly. “Unfortunately, the incident seems to have severely harmed the princess mentally.”

  “She doesn’t trust anyone anymore. Not even me.” Desa spoke softly, closing her eyes at the pain of Phynis’ accusations.

  “Oh. I’m sorry, I didn’t realize that something so horrible had happened.” Lily’s eyes went wide at the explanation and she put a hand over her mouth. Ilmas was keeping quiet, but he was obviously torn between being bewildered and simply moving away from them.

  “There’s no way you could have known.” Desa told her, smiling sadly. “All we can do is hope she works her way past it. That and try to regain her trust.”

  “I guess that’s true.” Lily chewed her lip a little. “I’ll do what I can, but I’m no good with nobles.”

  “I think I’m just going to lead some people over to the buildings Sistina rebuilt.” Ilmas ventured, breaking the mood somewhat as he smiled awkwardly. “I’m not entirely sure what to do, so at least that would be something I can help with.”

  “Thank you, Ilmas.” Desa smiled at him gently, and Lily’s face lit up as she grinned.

  “Good idea, Ilmas. I’m not much more help, but we’d best get people settled. It’ll be a lot more crowded now.” She agreed, and the two smiled at each other before starting to try to get together small groups to lead over to the buildings near the cavern wall.