Two royal houses and a knightly order, the wizard realized.
“My god!” Elmo said, stumbling to one knee and getting a closer look.
“What is it, Elmo?” Shanhaevel moved beside him. “Who is this?”
“I don’t believe it,” the big man said, reaching out to nudge the comatose form. “It’s him.”
“Him, who?” Ahleage demanded as he and the others crowded around.
Elmo took a deep breath before replying, “Prince Thrommel. It’s the missing prince!”
Shanhaevel fell back, stunned. Thrommel? In here? In the bowels of the temple? Boccob!
Govin shook his head in disbelief, and Draga grinned from ear to ear. Shirral checked the man, feeling to see if he was injured or ensorcelled in some way.
The prince stirred. His chest rose ever so slightly, then fell, and Shanhaevel thought he saw the eyelids flicker. For the first time, the elf noticed the finely tooled gold belt around the man’s waist and the gold medallion around his neck with the emblem of a crown and a crescent moon inscribed upon it.
The prince’s eyelids fluttered open, blinking in the light of the lanterns. He reached out, grasped the edges of his coffin, and tried to rise. Govin’s strong hand was there to aid him. The knight lifted the man into a sitting position, from where the prince blinked repeatedly and peered about, studying the faces of the six companions surrounding him.
“Where—? Where am I? Who are you?”
“My lord,” Govin began, “I am Sir Govin Dahna, servant of Cuthbert. These are my companions and friends. Are you injured in any way?”
The prince blinked several more times as he focused on the knight’s face. “I— I don’t think so,” he said, moving his arms and legs experimentally. “Who are you, again? And where in the hells am I?”
“We are the Alliance, my lord,” the knight responded, “and you are in the bowels of the ruined Elemental Temple.”
“The temple! What am I doing here? What alliance? What are you talking about?”
“We are—” Govin began, but Elmo interrupted him.
“My lord, I am a Knight of the Hart, like yourself. These companions and I have banded together in the service of the viscount of Verbobonc and your father, at the behest of Burne of the tower. We were exploring the ruins of the temple and discovered you sealed away—magically preserved it seems. We apparently broke the spell.”
“I see,” Thrommel replied, rubbing his eyes. “Burne, you say? What dire circumstances would cause him to send you all into the ruins of the temple?” Then, shaking his head in dismissal, he continued, “I must get to Mitrik so I can let everyone know I am alive and well. Jolene must be beside herself with worry. The wedding! Tell me they haven’t cancelled the wedding!”
The prince tried to rise, but he was unsteady on his feet, and several hands reached out to aid him as he slowly and carefully climbed out of the coffin.
“My lord,” Elmo said gravely. “You have been missing for seven years. It’s the spring of 579.”
Thrommel stared, swaying unsteadily on his feet. “Seven years?” he breathed. “They must all think I’m dead.”
“No,” Govin interjected. “Not all.”
“My lord,” Elmo said. “Somehow, through some means of scrying, members of your father’s court knew you still lived, but there appeared to be no way to determine your location. Jolene has refused to marry, although there have been a number of suitors.”
“Ah, Jolene,” Thrommel said, smiling gently. “Always the loyal one—fiercely so. I hope she is well.”
“And Melias,” Govin added, “who served with you at the fall of the temple ten years ago, held out hope that he would someday find you.”
“Hmm,” the prince mused, nodding his head absently as he listened to the unfolding tale. “His dedication honors me.”
Elmo looked at the rest of the Alliance, from face to face, his own visage grave as he spoke “Sadly, my lord, Melias was leading this expedition, but he fell in battle not three days ago. I am sorry.”
“No!” the prince said, his unsteady legs betraying him at last. He sat down hard. “Not Melias. I would have welcomed seeing him again.”
“And he, you, my lord,” Shanhaevel said. “As would have my master, Lanithaine. He was on his way here when he also fell.”
The prince looked at Shanhaevel and frowned. “Lanithaine, the wizard?”
Shanhaevel only nodded.
“Two of my company, fallen in battle, and I, missing for seven years? What is going on? Why are we in the depths of the temple? Tell me your tale, and quickly.”
Shanhaevel blinked once at the man’s commanding manner, but then the elf remembered that he was, after all, a prince, used to commanding and to getting what he wanted with but a word.
With little fanfare, Elmo explained the situation to Thrommel. When he was done, the prince sat thinking for several long moments. Finally, he spoke again.
“This key … you now have it?”
“Yes, Prince Thrommel,” Shanhaevel said, retrieving the box from his pack and opening the lid to display to the prince.
Both Thrommel and Govin recoiled from the thing, and the prince said, “Ugh! It is foul with evil. I can feel its corruption even from here.” He turned back to Elmo. “You say that you recovered it from a wizard named Falrinth? The very same who also rode with me at the Battle of Emridy Meadows? He fell in battle that day.”
“Perhaps he was taken prisoner instead, my lord,” Elmo replied. “He might have been broken in some way and made to serve the temple.”
“That is very grave news,” Thrommel said, “but it shall be addressed, just as soon as we return to the surface. You say that Burne is researching the means to destroy this key?”
“Yes,” Shanhaevel replied. “We must take it to Hommlet, at once. Once the key is destroyed, the demon will be forever imprisoned in this place.”
“Yes,” the prince said, “and I must ride to Mitrik, this very day. My sword! Where is Fragarach?” Thrommel looked about frantically, glancing into the coffin as well. “Was there a sword here, with me?”
“I see only your shield, prince,” Ahleage said, pointing to the crested shield that had lain beneath Thrommel’s feet in the coffin. “There is no sword.”
“Ah!” Thrommel cried, pointing to the lid of the coffin.
Shanhaevel turned his gaze to where the lid rested upon the floor, cast away when the Alliance had awakened the prince. Where the inlaid cross had been, there now rested a fine broadsword, its hilt wrapped in silver and gold wire, its pommel set with brilliant emeralds. The blade shone brightly even in the dim light of the lanterns, gleaming with an almost unnatural bluish hue.
“Fragarach!” Thrommel shouted, holding forth his hand. The sword leaped free of the lid of its own accord, crossing the distance to the prince’s outstretched grasp. Thrommel held the blade aloft, closing his eyes in contentment, as though some unseen power coursed from the blade into his body.
When Prince Thrommel opened his eyes again, they were clear with determination and purpose.
“We must leave this chapel and find our way out of the temple,” he said. “You must deliver the key to Burne, and I must ride to Mitrik.”
Shanhaevel sat with his back against the wall of the chapel, keeping an eye on the others while they slept. Despite the prince’s eagerness to move quickly, the lack of sleep and the exertion of battle had caught up with the members of the Alliance. While Shanhaevel, Shirral, and Draga rested, Elmo, Ahleage, Govin, and Prince Thrommel kept watch.
Burne had visited Shanhaevel in his dreams again. The wizard’s floating visage had appeared, and the words Burne had spoken remained with Shanhaevel even upon waking.
Shanhaevel, I have discovered the means to destroy the key. As soon as you retrieve it and are able to return to Hommlet, we can conduct the procedure together. If, for some reason, you are unable to reach me, or if something happens to me before you can return, I will pass along the steps for
the key’s destruction now.
You must expose the key—complete with its four gems—in quick succession and in the proper order, to the forces of each of the four elements. First comes air—a gust of wind should do nicely. Follow that with a hard strike from stone, preferably granite. Exposure to searing flame is next, to be followed, finally, by complete immersion in cold, black water. Only after these four steps are followed will the orb crack and its magical energies dissipate.
Hurry, Shanhaevel! Return to me with the key!
When Shanhaevel awakened several hours later, the dream remained in his consciousness, and the import of Burne’s words had horrified him. The key could not be destroyed unless it was whole, and the Alliance did not possess the four gems. We’re not done, yet, he had realized. He had hung his head in dismay, dreading to tell the others, but tell them the elf did, and his words had been met with many groans and disconcerted looks.
“We have no choice but to continue to look for the gems,” Govin had said grimly.
“First, we see to it that the prince reaches the surface,” Elmo had added.
Thrommel had shaken his head. “No. Your task is far more important. I will make my own way to the top, guided by the wisdom of Cuthbert. You continue your quest. Seek the gems.”
Elmo had opened his mouth to protest, but the prince would hear none of it, so the huge axeman had finally given in.
“I shall depart a little before you,” Thrommel had announced. “With luck, your fiendish spidery friend will not be there, but if it is, I will lure it away from you so that you may escape.” When he had seen both Govin and Elmo shaking their heads and opening their mouths about to protest, the prince had silenced them with a gesture. “Do not worry, my friends. Fragarach will protect me from this fiend.”
Now Shanhaevel sat, awake, thinking about all that had transpired. It seemed like many years ago that he had set out with Lanithaine to ride to Hommlet. He had been almost a different person, then. Certainly, if he survived this terrifying escapade and ever managed to return to the Welkwood, he would be a different person, a far different person.
Shaking his head, Shanhaevel turned to his spellbooks and spent the next several hours meticulously studying, memorizing the formulas he would need to cast his spells. When he finished, he sat pondering the coming trials within the temple. Shirral was still in some sort of reverent trance, communing with the forces of nature, bringing the powers of the earth into herself in order to shape and form them as she desired.
Shanhaevel sighed softly. Though we draw upon powers that are vastly different, he mused, in the end, we both become vessels, channeling that power from somewhere to somewhere else. Why is it, then, that neither of us can comprehend the method the other employs to garner that power?
The wizard looked at his own pack, bulging with gear. He noticed a particular bulge and frowned. It was the smallish box, in which was the small golden skull, the key to either free or destroy the demon. Shanhaevel frowned because the thing made him uneasy. Every time he picked the box up, he was overcome with a sense of dread and foreboding. He just didn’t like the thing.
Half grumbling, he leaned over, flipped the pocket of the pack open, and retrieved the box. He shook off the unease that washed over him as best as he could and set the box in his lap. He remembered Burne’s explanation of how to destroy the thing and wished he could carry out the ceremony here and now.
Shanhaevel opened the box and stared down at the small golden skull. The thing was nestled in a padded, velvet-lined depression in the middle of the box, staring up at him. If he let his imagination run, he could almost sense the skull smiling at him.
Very carefully, and with no small amount of trepidation, Shanhaevel reached down and tugged the skull free of its form-fitting depression. Almost immediately, he was overwhelmed with visions—horrible visions of agony, torture, and death. He tensed, suffering through the stinging pain of ice and wind as he fell endlessly through a colorless void, his body buffeted cruelly by a howling storm that carried him away. White light seared him, blinding him. He tumbled into nothingness, and suddenly he was buried beneath a million tons of dirt and stone, his body pinned deep beneath the surface of the world. Trapped, unable to speak, to move, to even open his eyes, he was crushed by the pressure of the earth itself. His ribs cracked, his heart constricted, and his breath was squeezed from him.
Then he was elsewhere, free to move again, gasping for the blessed air—only to discover that it was searing hot, scorching his lungs. Flames licked at his body, burning away his hair, his skin, boiling his blood in the span of a heartbeat. He opened his mouth to scream and felt his flesh scorched to nothing. He swallowed a briny mouthful of cold water. Choking, he flailed about once more, drowning in darkness, feeling himself sinking deeper and deeper, the pressure of the brackish sea enveloping him and bearing him down and down and—
Shanhaevel blinked, gasping a deep lungful of air. The elf’s heart raced, and his face and hands were covered with a cold sheen of sweat. He felt his face drawn back in a fierce snarl of pain and tension.
The chapel. He was back in the abandoned chapel. With only one shuttered lamp burning, the small room was very dim.
Shanhaevel sighed and relaxed, feeling the ache in his tense muscles slowly drain away. He shook his head, clearing the visions that still flickered in the corners of his mind, and he wondered how long he had been sitting there. He looked around at his resting companions. The chapel seemed quiet, but—
In half a heartbeat, Shanhaevel was no longer there but in a great and terrible temple, one decorated with horrible images carved into stone the color of death and decay. Standing in the middle of the great room, looking at him, was an older man, dressed in crimson robes and leaning upon a staff. The man’s face was wrinkled and leathery, and he wore a smile as he gazed at the wizard, though the grin was far from benign. Slowly, almost languidly, the man reached a hand out toward Shanhaevel and opened his mouth to speak.
“Give me the orb, whelp,” the man said.
The hatred and malevolence that washed over the elf as he heard these words made him cringe and shudder. He shrieked in horror and tried to back away, but, overwhelmed with loathing and terror for this figure standing before him, he slammed into a great column and crumpled to the floor.
The old man walked toward him, but no matter how hard he tried, Shanhaevel could not move.
The old man reached for the orb, grasping it and taking it from Shanhaevel. Still smiling, the old man backed away, the key grasped in his hands. He moved to the front of the temple, where a great raised dais spread out before a rounded alcove. In the center of this alcove sat a huge black throne, carved of stone. The old man sat down upon the throne and sank, disappearing into the very floor of the temple.
Shanhaevel found himself pulled along, following the man as the throne descended, slipping deeper into the depths below the temple. Finally, the throne stopped, and the man stood and walked to the center of a large room filled with earth and the smell of rot. Fungi thrived everywhere. In the center of the room, next to the elderly man, was an immense blob, a being of putrescence and decay. Looking as much like a bloated mushroom as anything, the creature stood upon four immensely thick legs. A pair of strange armlike extensions protruded from its sides. The fungus-thing stank of rot and mold. Slowly, inexorably, the fungus creature reached for him.
Shanhaevel screamed.…
Shanhaevel’s cries clamored through the chapel. When the wizard opened his eyes, Govin was on his feet, standing before him, sword in hand, looking down.
Prince Thrommel stood close by, Fragarach in his hand, apparently ready to do battle with any foe.
“What is it? What’s wrong?” the knight asked. He looked ready to strike at whatever unseen menace threatened his companion.
Shanhaevel raised his hand to point at the foreboding figures standing before him, threatening him, and blinked. The old man and the fungus creature were both gone. He peered around the chap
el, looking for the horrific beings, but the figures were nowhere to be found.
“A vision,” Shanhaevel breathed, looking down at his hand, which was still firmly clasped around the golden skull. “They were standing right there.” He understood now how the golden key functioned, could feel the unwanted knowledge flowing into him from the item.
“Who?” Govin demanded, looking around once more. “Who was here?”
Shanhaevel swallowed and shook his head. He knew what he had just seen, for the orb itself was telling him, even though his mind rebelled at the implications of it.
“Iuz,” the wizard croaked, his hands shaking. “Iuz the old. Iuz the terrible.”
“What?” Govin cried.
“Yes,” Thrommel muttered, “the Old One’s hand was always behind the rise of the temple. You did not know this?”
Govin shook his head, his frown intense.
The other companions were stirring now, moving over to see what the commotion was about. They all seemed perfectly fine, oblivious that anything might have been out of the ordinary in the chamber.
“I— I saw them,” Shanhaevel said. It had seemed so real! “They wanted this.” He held up the orb.
Govin drew back from it, repulsed by the evil it embodied.
“He fashioned it,” Shanhaevel continued, “he and his mistress, the demoness Zuggtmoy. I saw them both standing there, in the middle of the room. He smiled at me”—Shanhaevel shuddered, remembering—“and told me to give him the orb.”
The rest of his companions looked around, doubt showing on their faces.
“There is no one here now,” Draga said.
“I never saw or heard anyone,” Ahleage added, wrinkling his brow, obviously convinced that the wizard had been seeing things.
The Temple of Elemental Evil Page 20
