by Scott Zamek
“What do you make of it?” asked Lockley.
Eyebold held the lantern to the wall and ran his fingers along the pictographs. “Place the ember in the sacred hearth and rekindle the Light.”
“We do not know what the ember is, or if it even exists,” said Ethreal. “And there is nothing here about where the temple is located.”
Aerol reached into his cloak and motioned to Filby. “We have the Map of Dunhelm, and we have the see-er, and they have held in good stead thus far.” He placed the map at the base of the marble pedestal, and Eyebold held the lantern overhead. Filby stared at the parchment for some time, then turned it clockwise. He shook his head and fidgeted, then turned the map again and waited. “Nothing,” he said finally. “Not a thing. The map is blank!”
Aerol lowered his head in thought. “Then we follow the old legend, which places the temple on a high plateau in the exact center of the eastern kingdom of Saercindill, what we now know as the Beyond Lands.”
Eyebold moved the lantern over the Map of Dunhelm. “We came from the west and saw no such plateau, so the temple must still lie to the east. And judging from my own lands, we crossed the Adamantine River slightly north of center. We should bear south and east to find the Temple of the Ancients.”
“And the ember,” said Ethreal, shaking her head. “What is it and where is it?”
Aerol looked toward the cave entrance. What little light the day held forth was now quickly fading into night. “We set camp here . . . study the cave walls. Perhaps we will find the answer.” Aerol’s unflagging confidence seemed to fade with the light of day, and the others saw it in him. He was not sure what the runes would tell them, or if he could even decipher the archaic version of the script. If he could not manage the translation, and if no answers came, the next step, for the first time in the journey, was unclear to him.
Lieutenant Lockley walked outside to check on the sergeant, while the others unpacked and spread out their bedrolls. Broadhurst kindled a fire at the mouth of the cave and began cooking a pot of beans. Filby joined him, and slowly the others filtered outside with canteens and rations of smoked meat. Filby looked up and wondered. “When was the last time we saw the stars.”
Broadhurst stirred the bubbling pot of beans as a thin line of smoke wavered toward the sky. “Them stars will come. Just keep on marchin’ and the days’ll come back.” The faint and mournful cry of goblins rose away to the west at the edge of the dead forest, but too far imbedded in the distant night for anyone to be concerned. The others lingered outside, while Aerol and Eyebold ate quickly and returned to the cave. One with lantern and one with torch, they began studying the ancient runes.
The fire burned low. As Filby scraped his near-empty plate of beans onto the embers, he could hear voices inside the cave bantering back and forth. “That is the eastern variation for the temple rune . . .” And an answering voice, “Altar, the meaning is not temple, but altar.”
The night grew long, and then morning, and then night again. And another full day and night, and Filby found himself sitting by the pot of beans once again and listening to the voices from inside the cave. “Seek the ember . . .” and an answer, “That rune does not refer to the ember, it refers to a great light . . .” The back-and-forth interpretations and disagreements had gone on for two days. Aerol and Eyebold had poured over the walls of the cave, studied the marble pedestal, reconstructed partial runes, and guessed at the meaning of symbols faded beyond recognition.
Filby was becoming restless. He walked inside to see Aerol on his knees, shining the lantern into a remote corner of the cave. Eyebold held a torch just above, and Ethreal stood, hands on hips, watching impatiently.
“. . . that is the archaic form,” Filby heard Aerol say from his knees.
“No, part of the rune is missing,” countered Eyebold. “The full rune means ‘to search.’”
“Any luck?” Filby did not want to interrupt, but he felt the time to share information was long overdue.
Aerol turned his head and looked up from his knees. “Did you check the map again?” Aerol had left the map spread out at the base of the pedestal, and Filby was supposed to look at it periodically for any new signs.
“Nothing,” said Filby.
Aerol slumped his shoulders and returned to his work. “We have translated half of the runes in the cave and those on the pedestal, but they reveal nothing about an ember or the temple. Most of the runes are too faded to read, and some are cracked in half and we have to guess at their meaning. It is very rare to find a rune like this, that is whole and complete.” He pointed above his head, to the wall, where one rune was deeply carved into the stone.
“We could simply look for the temple,” said Eyebold, “and hope something arises on the road.”
“Do none of them give any clues?” asked Filby. “Does that one have a translation?” He pointed to the deep-cut rune over Aerol’s head.
“It means ‘move on,’” said Aerol over his shoulder, as if distracted form the work at hand.
“Are we to continue on our way?” asked Filby.
“Move on to where?” said Ethreal.
Eyebold glanced at the rune. “Is it not ‘push on’ or ‘press on’ if we read it in the ancient tongue?”
Ethreal shook her head, irritated. “What is the difference?”
“Press on . . .” Filby turned it over in his mind for a few moments. “Push on . . .” He reached out and pressed the stone. It pushed inward, and a small door slid open. A bright light flooded the cave.
Aerol and the others stood in awe and shock. “Treasure of the Ancients!” said Aerol, as he reached in and pulled out a large crystal the size of a massive diamond. Filby gaped at the ember, and he could not remove his gaze, nor could he look too closely. It was a glorious and piercing light, like daylight and sunlight and stars all mixed into one. The glow did not cast far, but what pierced into the cave was the most magical and purest of light. Aerol held the ember in his upturned palms as if holding the most fragile of delicate objects, and he peered into the very heart of mankind.
“The immortal Light,” gasped Filby.
“I think I understand,” said Aerol, his voice subdued and awestruck. “The Light may die, but the ember never does.”
“Question is, what do we do with it?” Sergeant Broadhurst had entered the cave. He had seen the light from outside and now stood with the group.
Aerol gingerly wrapped the ember in a thick cloth, the light all but disappearing beneath to leave only the slightest glow seeping through the fabric. “We take it to the Temple of the Ancients . . . place it in the sacred hearth, and rekindle the Light.” He handed the ember to Ethreal, and she stowed it deep inside her pack. “We must now make for the temple with all haste.” The two days at the cave had been witness to the rising darkness. The sun could no longer be seen, and midday had become black as night. Aerol thought about waiting for morning, but the days and nights no longer held any meaning. “Pack the gear quickly,” he said. “We leave tonight.”
SERGEANT BROADHURST lit the torches, and Eyebold led into the black day, north by east. The cobblestone path they had followed to the cave did not continue east, so they traveled overland along parched ground. They trudged through the day and then the night, a long, slow trudge over a pathless land. A faint glimmer did mark the morning, though it came not from the direction of sunrise, but from far away in the west where a pale sky still showed over a land yet to be engulfed by ruinous evil. Even in the vague light they could see smoldering fires to the east, dim smoke rising in columns to fill the air with sooty haze. The hills gave way and they moved through a wasteland of charred ground that crunched underfoot. Aerol joined Eyebold in the lead, and they continued two abreast, torches held high against the shadows. They could see a short distance ahead, but what they saw was bleak and lifeless.
Aerol led on for two days more, trudging through the dreary land, stopping rarely to eat and even more rarely to sleep. Filby constantly felt tired
and hungry; perhaps it was knowing he had left behind the last campsite he was likely to see, or perhaps it was fear of what lay ahead. In either case, he kept silent and hiked on.
“What if we don’t find the plateau.” Sergeant Broadhurst marched behind Aerol, and the question had long been on his mind. “I mean, beggin’ yer pardon, but this is a wide land.”
“All we can do is continue onward, and continue to read the map for clues.” Aerol peered into the shadows, tilting his torch into the gloom, but the blackness was thick and smothering. Nothing could be seen but the barren ground directly ahead.
“The map has been blank for days,” complained Filby. “And even the lines are beginning to fade.”
“We push east,” insisted Aerol. “We have the ember—fate works in our favor.”
They knew morning only by the thin light in the west, but they could see again, as if looking across a dark room lit by the last flickering gasp of a solitary lantern. The ground rose gradually ahead into a land of ashen hills long bereft of rain, or sun, or any normal force of nature that could be considered righteous and good. To the south, a dim ridgeline followed at the edge of sight. They moved through the northern tier of a rocky valley, where still the plumes of smoke off to the east tarnished the distant sky; where the slightest of dreary winds filtered in to cast thick fumes over the land, and they could all make out the rising stench of decay and death.
The ridge to the south ended in an abrupt, rocky spur, while the land widened into a ceaseless expanse of ominous hills seething with vapors of the deep earth. What fading light came from the west gave rise to shadows in the valleys and low spots between hills, but the light did not last long—perhaps an hour or two at high noon. They were soon back on the torches as the day moved away to the western reaches, disappearing beyond the distant mountains.
A rancid wind crept down from the north, and the ground crumbled underfoot. At last they climbed down into a deep hopeless valley, into vast and hard despair without end, for the darkness had taken not just the light but the hope of the land—emptied it into the very bowels of the acrid earth and into the deep dark folds of the world, nevermore to be seen by humankind. Filby wrapped his cloak around his face, but it provided little relief. The air itself was as foul and tainted as the withered land.
The night grew black as if a molten tar had been poured over the world, and Filby felt like he was walking into an eternal hole pressed into the very depths of the night. The torches strained against the darkness, casting a shorter light with every stride east. Then down from the north a rumble of thunder rolled—not the resounding boom of a normal storm, but the drum-like beat of impending evil, for they began to hear eerie cries in the night. Some were the distant howls of goblins inhabiting some unseen dead forest, far away and of little concern. Some were the far-off and eerie cries of the unknown—creatures they had never heard before, creatures that populated the night and never ventured beyond the Far Mountains. One was the shrill cry of a nightwraith, and they knew it well; it shivered the spine, and they held their weapons tight.
Aerol pushed onward. The deep black void overhead seemed to step down to the ground until earth and sky were one and the same. All carried torches now; the extra light was needed against the malignant shadows growing from the east. Lockley, protecting the rear, could barely make out the bobbing frame of Filby to his front. The lieutenant kept his musket cocked and at the ready, for the shrieking calls in the night grew louder and closer, and their enemy was cloaked by the enveloping shroud of darkness. The cries and screeches now came from in front and behind, from all sides, and Lockley repeatedly turned around and thrust his torch into the blackness, startled by a sudden and unknown sound.
They toiled on in the same manner for a day and a night, hour upon hour, and still they trudged onward, toward the distant spires in the east belching smoke into the air; under forgotten tree limbs, long decayed by absent sun; beyond the wild rivers of the uncharted land, never before seen by the likes of men; through the vast, unending valleys charred into nothing. They traveled for many dark days, always looking behind at some unidentifiable and unseen sound in the night, until Aerol came to a sudden halt. He whipped his cloak over his shoulder and raised an arm forward. A dim glow illuminated the sky over the far horizon, as if a forest fire was burning beyond the curvature of the earth. Shadows cast by the distant light revealed the silhouette, at long last, of a high plateau. “Our destination is at hand!” called Aerol, as he pointed a finger into the gloom. “Another day and we will set eyes upon the Temple of the Ancients!”
“If it exists,” said Ethreal. She shifted her backpack slightly, thinking of the precious ember in her charge.
Aerol doubled his pace and pressed on toward the faint glow above the horizon. On through the dark day they toiled, and into the night, until the land began to rise up along dim hills that folded the valley into canyons and peaks bordering the plateau. They stood at the very brink of their destination. A sharp rise cut into the near hills, and they climbed up, but Aerol halted and raised his hand. The mingled sound of voices and hooves and neighing horses came from ahead. “Look to the torches!” Aerol whispered.
Filby doused the torches, and they all stood in silence, listening.
“Stay here . . . stay low.” Aerol crouched down, motioning to Eyebold, before the two slunk ahead into the shadows. They crept over the rise, and there below them, a boundless army of halfwraith and troggs was encamped at the base of the plateau. Watch fires pricked into the wide valley like countless stars in a deepening night. Eyebold pointed and shuddered. Aerol looked, and saw that a nightwraith walked among the troggs.
They returned to the group where even Filby noticed Eyebold’s sullen gaze. “We cannot stay the path,” said Aerol. “A vast army stands in our way—we must double back and approach from the south.” Throughout all the lands and malign days without end Aerol had never once faltered, but now the Far Rider could not suppress the slightest hint of despair in his voice.
“More delay?” said Ethreal, gripping the hilt of her sword. “Our destination is at hand.”
“What strength?” Lieutenant Lockley rested his forearm on his flintlock pistol, looking grimly at the sergeant, then at Aerol.
“Hundreds . . . a thousand perhaps,” answered Aerol. “And a nightwraith among them.”
“Bolloxed.” Broadhurst stood in his usual manner, as if at attention.
“We must go around,” agreed Eyebold. “There is no other way.”
Ethreal reluctantly ungripped her sword and let her arm drop. “Then lead on, Watcher—you are better at these endless detours than I.” She swept her arm forward, inviting Eyebold ahead.
They did not light the torches. Eyebold turned and led the group south along a low ridge, where they were hidden from the plateau. They descended much of the ground they had already climbed, yet they dared not venture onto the high hills until they were well clear of the encampment. They crept along for hours without torches, engulfed in the dismal blackness, until Aerol signaled to turn east again and they began climbing back up along low mountains. The ground rose, and once again they could see the shadowy outline of the high plateau. Campfires and torches dotted the western valley where the enemy encampment lay, though Aerol knew his group was now well out of sight. They dared not rekindle the torches, but continued along slowly and with care toward the distant hills.
They made for the bald crest of a low mountain, the top wrapped in vague shadows. A dim light flickered from the far side—not from the direction of the enemy camp, and from what source they did not know. They could now barely see their way in the darkness: the gradual incline of the base of the plateau, the rocky and denuded walls, enemy torches away to the northwest. Slowly the ground tilted upward, and slowly Aerol led onward, until a sheer, rising cliff blocked the way. They had come to the edge of the plateau. Far above, the top showed sharp and flat like a mountain cut in half, and the mysterious light glanced down upon the base of the cliff—p
ure and clean but still unable to break the full grasp of the relentless night.
“We climb,” whispered Aerol. “No sounds—stay your swords.” He glanced at Ethreal, and she knew the meaning of the gaze. She cinched her pack tight, feeling the weight of the ember against her back.
Eyebold found a handhold, then a foothold, and began the dark climb. Lockley and Broadhurst slung their muskets, first securing their powder before following along behind. Filby brought up the rear, watching as the light from the top warped the shape of his companions into long and weary shadows. But the rock face made him uneasy. The sharp, jagged edges; the black and sickly mountain; the perpetual slime covering the rocks—this mountain seemed a symbol, a story, of the decline of righteousness, of certain and impending destruction, of the end to villages like Meadowkeep. No matter what he thought of, or where he looked, Filby could not shake the constant feeling of thick, deepening dread.
The mountain slowly gave way in a long and silent climb. Ethreal swung over the jagged edge, first to the top, then slid into the shadows on her stomach and waited for the others. She could see the distant glints of watch fires etched in the black void of the far-off plateau, and beyond, the faint and luminous glow of something else, some unseen source of light below the horizon. Even in the scant light, Ethreal could make out a rocky landscape ahead, a landscape strewn with boulders and stone ledges jutting up from volcanic rock. Somewhere beyond the reach of this wretched land, she knew a round sun was rising, but no hope of dawn pierced the black sky above this remote plateau. Nor was the enemy about, at least not close at hand, and Ethreal allowed herself a brief sense of relief.
