“We hope,” Cavus added.
“We hope,” Dane said with a nod. “If they are, I guess all of our problems will be over soon.” Dane turned and smiled at Cavus, who looked paler than before. “I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for Voss to jump out of the walls, though. Look at this place. The giants like warmth, not this ice box. No one’s been here for a very, very long time.”
They started moving again, their heavy boots and dry coughs echoing down the cavernous passage. The air was heavy with cold, and their breaths frosted in the air.
What the hell is behind those doors? Dane wondered. Kruje kept looking at them like he knew the answer. Weapons? The hall was big enough and long enough it could have served as some sort of munitions alley, or maybe it had once been a loading point the soldiers used to reach the surface. Most Vossian war machines and automatons would have fit in there, as well.
He watched Kruje. What are you planning to do?
“Nice rest?” Dane asked Maddox.
“Let’s keep moving,” Maddox sneered. He sniffled and shivered as he walked. “I need to be away from this Goddess-forsaken place.”
“Then we should stop taking so many damned breaks,” Dane said.
Maddox glared at him, and Dane prepared himself for another round of insults and threats when he noticed Kruje wasn’t moving.
The giant stayed in front of the doors, watching them as if transfixed. The Voss’s jaw was slack and his massive hands tensed. He slowly cocked his head to one side, listening.
“Let’s go, beast!” Maddox roared. Kruje didn’t move, so Maddox stalked towards him. “I’m not going to tell you again, you brute!”
“Naag!” Kruje shouted back. His voice was thunderous.
Maddox erupted. “Don’t talk back to me in that devil tongue, you ape!” he shouted. He held the stone up for the giant to see. “Is it your time, brute? Time for you to die?!”
Dane had understood what Kruje said. “Maddox, you jackass,” Dane said. “He’s asking you to keep your voice down so he can hear!”
“I’m going to twist your head off!” Maddox screamed at the giant. He shook with rage. Kruje looked down on Maddox with a bored expression. The giant stood quiet while Maddox advanced, shouting obscenities and gesturing madly with his token of power. Tired though he was, Dane focused his mind, ready to seize the Veil.
Maddox walked right up to Kruje. His squat and scarred head barely came up to the giant’s waist. He stopped shouting long enough to catch his breath, and for a moment everything was eerily silent. Kruje didn’t move.
A sound issued from the other side of the door. It was so faint it was no wonder they hadn’t heard it before, and Dane couldn’t even tell what it was. He rushed past Maddox and carefully pressed his ear against the lair of brittle ice covering the stone. Just as the side of his face started to go numb he heard it again.
“Voices,” Dane whispered back over his shoulder. “Human, I think. We’re not alone down here.”
“Good Goddess, we can get out…” Cavus sighed.
“Not until I say so,” Maddox barked, but Dane heard the desperation in his tone. “We don’t know who they are. Besides, this idiot giant can’t even get the door open.”
“Kruje,” Dane said to the Voss. Kruje’s eyes widened for a moment before Maddox stepped between them, his big eye bulging at Dane.
“None of that language!” he shouted. “I won’t warn you again, Dawn Knight! There will be nothing spoken in my presence that I can’t understand!”
“That narrows our options considerably,” Dane said. “Listen, Maddox, he knows something about this place…a lot more than you do, that’s for certain.” Maddox’s face was red with anger. “It’s going to be difficult to ask him what we need to know with you waving that damn thing around every time you feel threatened.”
Cavus and Gulg flanked Maddox.
“I won’t have you and that black beast making plans to kill me,” Maddox said. For once, he didn’t scream.
“Do you want to get out of here or not?” Dane asked him. Maddox watched him distrustfully. “Listen…I just want to get out of this pit. Let me ask Kruje what he knows, and maybe, just maybe we can make some actual progress.”
“So his name is Kruje?” Maddox said with a sneer. “You two are best friends now, eh? I thought you of all people would know not to trust a Voss.”
“I don’t trust him,” Dane said calmly. “Any more than I trust you. But we don’t have a whole lot to work with right now. He might be our only chance of ever seeing daylight again, and I’d rather not waste it.”
Maddox considered Dane for a painfully long time. Dane weighed his chances of killing Maddox before he could use that damned stone, and how likely Kruje would be to help him rather than crush his skull.
“No tricks,” Maddox threatened. “If you so much as glance at me sideways, the giant is dead…and so are you.”
Dane didn’t believe Cavus or Gulg would give him much trouble, but it was best to tread carefully. There was no telling what they’d have to do to get out of that dreary place – the more able bodies they had available, the better.
He nodded, and looked Kruje in the face. Goddess, this is going to be difficult. There was really no way for Dane to ask Kruje a complicated question, but if he could make clear how limited his Vossian vocabulary was maybe he could get Kruje to “talk down” enough that they might actually understand one another.
Up until the arena battle Dane had never realized just how enormous a Voss really was. Kruje’s massively muscled arms were the size of tree-trunks, and his enormous torso was as wide as two full-grown men. The giant’s abnormally dark flesh made him seem almost featureless in the dark, and there were no wrinkles or lines, no sweat or folds in his skin. Runic markings and spiraling tattoos covered the Voss’s body like purplish veins.
Kruje watched Dane with furrowed brows, the only hair on his head. His look was unnerving – the solid white eyes reminded Dane of a corpse. Dane pointed at the door.
“Ter?” he said.
Kruje considered him as one might an idiot child. The giant looked at Maddox, and the stone clutched in his hand.
“Navak,” Dane said, hoping it meant ‘safe’. “Navak.” He pointed at the door again. “Ter?”
“Et ter navak zor dun,” Kruje said. “Allzeth ter ek Nak Shar Mik.”
“Stop, stop…” Dane shook his head. “Uhm…Ahn.” Again, he pointed at the door. “Ter?”
Kruje muttered something incomprehensible and folded his arms across his chest. He looked at Dane with a confused and annoyed expression.
“What are you saying to him?” Maddox blurted out.
“Quiet,” Dane snapped. He stared up at Kruje, not sure if he should try again. After what felt like an extremely long time Kruje shrugged his great shoulders.
“Navoon.”
“The sun,” Dane nodded. “Sun…daytime. Daytime?” He looked at the door and nodded. “I think he’s telling me it can only be opened during the day.”
“What?” Maddox shouted. “What are you talking about? How in the hell are we supposed to know what time it is down here?!”
“Because…” Dane looked up at Kruje, and understood. “We’ll know because the door will open. It will open when it’s daytime, all by itself.” He watched Kruje for confirmation, knowing there was no way the Voss could provide any. “So I guess we wait.”
“Ridiculous,” Maddox snarled. “I don’t…”
“Maddox,” Dane said. “Shut up.”
Thirty-Eight
So they waited, presumably, Kruje thought, for the portal to open. He had no idea if it actually led into Black Sun, but since there was no way for him to explain his concerns to the humans he reasoned it was as good an option as any. It was certainly better than wandering down the munitions hall for another century.
By the J’ann, if I could only get that stone away from Maddox, I could stop living under his fat little thumb. Kruje’s eyes rarely left the
stone, which never left Maddox’s desperate grip. It was the bastard’s only defense against Kruje, and quite possibly from the other human, Dane.
Dane sat away from Maddox and his men, his back against the wall and his weary eyes fixed on his blade, which he polished with an old piece of cloth he’d pulled from his belt. Kruje also sat apart from the others so he could quietly watch, and quietly wait. His own blade – that horrid axe – lay at his feet. Even after months spent using the weapon it still felt unnatural in his hands, hands which had been born to a statesman and a stonecutter, not a warrior. He was content to let the Ironguard do the killing, and they seemed to enjoy their work. For as much and as often as the Voss waged war – with each other, with the surface dwellers, with other races of the underground – very few of the giants were actually knowledgeable when it came to fighting. They were planners and architects, engineers and artists of steel and Veilcraft, but not warriors.
The fate of the Voss isn’t supposed to matter to me anymore. I’ll never again be counted among them.
Fleeing Meledrakkar had been his only true choice. Kruje sometimes wondered why he bothered to carry on. He had nothing to return to, and nothing waiting for him except his own death.
Maddox talked quietly with his two killers, men who’d burned and stabbed and prodded Kruje with short blades over the course of many nights. That, too, didn’t matter, because a Voss’s damaged flesh always regenerated so long as they drew breath, but Kruje still felt the wounds long after they’d healed. The areas where they’d hurt him the most – the backs of his hands, his ribcage, his feet – burned the worst. Kruje imagined himself boiling Maddox and his minions alive in hot oil, slowly, so they could scream while their flesh loosened and fell from their bones.
The air was frozen. Kruje had only ever seen an ice cannon once before, but he knew one had been the cause of the frigid air down in those tunnels. The clunky machines were supposed to have been used against the humans during the Rift War, but only a handful were ever fully constructed, and only two had actually seen action before the fighting stopped. Kruje had no way of knowing if the cannon in Black Sun had been one of the active ones or not. Like the ice cannons, Black Sun had never seen any real use, as it had been left abandoned when it became clear how vulnerable the Voss were without Carastena Vlagoth to manage their tenuous alliance with the Tuscars and the Arkan. Even if the firing mechanism on the cannon had been disabled the devices were always stored fully fueled, and with the unstable nature of Veilcrafted liquids it would only have been a matter of time before the weapon developed a leak. Kruje imagined that was what had happened in Black Sun, for there was no other explanation for the prevalent ice and bone-gnashing chill. Half of the sewers of the J’ann-forsaken human city above were likely covered with frost.
Aside from guessing about the presence of an ice cannon, Kruje knew little about Black Sun other than its name. No two of the so-called Siege Cities had been built alike. Even the working of the security door was a guess on his part. Typically the Voss enchanted all portals in outposts and fortresses outside of Meledrakkar to unlock only during certain hours of the day. Kruje had no guarantee that was the case there, but he had no desire to walk and listen to Maddox’s irritating voice for the rest of his condemned life. Besides, he had no idea where the tunnel led, but if the door would take them into the city complex then chances were they could find a way out there. And once they entered Black Sun, Kruje would have a better chance of getting that stone away from Maddox, and he could finally be rid of the little maggot.
The other human, Dane, seemed very interested in the doors. Kruje wasn’t sure what to make of the strange man. He’d saved Kruje’s life, but later seemed to regret it. His Vossian was so atrocious it was almost an insult to listen to him, but at least he’d attempted communication, which was more than anyone else had done. It was obvious Dane had little love for Maddox, and that alone was reason to count him a friend, even if it was only for a short time.
Kruje was eager to see the inside of Black Sun. Everyone – even a rodent like Maddox – deserved a chance to behold a city built by the Voss. Their mastery of Veilcraft, engineering and architecture was a source of pride for the giants. Creation was their drive and their passion, and even a mortal enemy was granted enough quarter to bask in the splendor of what the Voss could produce.
His body knew it would be another hour before daylight, but he also knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep. He was too elated at the notion of seeing a piece of his home. If he were to sleep again in the underground it would be in Black Sun, for that was as close to returning to Meledrakkar as he was ever going to get.
Kruje’s eyes again fell on Dane. His armor and weapon marked him as a member of an order that had been feared and hated by the Voss during the Blood Queen’s war, but it was obvious to Kruje that Dane had fallen on hard times even before the incident at the arena. A cold void waited behind the man’s eyes, a storm of loss and loathing. Those knights were the sworn enemies of all who’d allied themselves with the Blood Queen…so it made absolutely no sense why this human had helped him.
Would he side with me again if I made a bid for freedom?
The air darkened as the flames Dane conjured started to expire; the knight would let them die entirely before he created new light. Dane used the Veil often – more often than he realized, Kruje thought – and the giant could tell how exhausted his constant contact made him. The Veil used the body, wore it down, just as it wore down Vossian machines and made them unstable after just the first use. Even if Dane were to become Kruje’s ally the giant doubted the knight would be a stable companion. The Veil drove humans mad, and it didn’t treat the Voss much better.
Kruje turned his attention back to the door. He’d dreamed of seeing one of the siege cities when he’d still been destined to wear the Third Iron Crown…back when being Voss had meant something to him. Miserable and disheartening as his situation was, Kruje was excited to see what waited on the other side of the door. Most of his dreams had died, but standing there somehow made him feel young again.
He breathed deep so he could attain Kar-Thelud. The peace wouldn’t last, but he’d enjoy it while he could.
Thirty-Nine
The cold air made Dane’s injuries ache, and the old scar on his stomach itched like mad. He hated the wound – it made him think about what had happened in the Razortooth. Normally he could shut the memories out with the Veil, but he was too exhausted to try.
His hands trembled. He saw piles of bodies with their eyes torn out, and his boots were wet with blood. He stood near the circle of women and the black-faced man as he circled them, trying to choose which would be the first to die. Ash filled the air like grey snow.
He saw the boy, dead on the ground by Dane’s hand.
Dane felt nauseous, like he’d been at sea. Tears froze where they fell to the ground. He wanted to fold in on himself.
Goddess, why can’t I be rid of this pain?
He wanted nothing more than to forget, and yet he thought about it nearly every day. He tried not to, tried to distract himself with what he was doing, with thoughts of the future…but there was no future. Not for him.
Dane couldn’t face what had been carved from his soul. He knew he’d spend the rest of his life in a shadow.
Enough, he told himself. Enough tears. Get on your feet.
Kruje hadn’t moved in quite some time. He just stood and watched the door. Maddox and his henchmen quietly talked amongst themselves as they watched Dane and the giant.
I have to get the hell out of here. I still have a job to do.
Dane walked up next to Kruje and waited. For some reason he sensed it was almost time.
A low rumble issued from the wall like the growl of a huge animal. Pale starglow bled around the massive doorframe. Without speaking a word the Kruje stepped up and threw the full force of his weight against the door. The heavy stone groaned, and a strong and meaty blast of putrid air pushed out at them.
The space beyond the door stank of decay and old waste. Kruje continued to push, and Dane was about to help when the door finally gave way and crashed open. Motes of crystal dust drifted down in a veil of debris.
Dane held his vra’taar ready as he cautiously stepped forward. His boots echoed loud on the old stone floor on the other side, which he noted was devoid of frost. The new air wasn’t as cold as what they’d grown accustomed to.
He kept moving, feeling small in the shadows. Solid shapes slowly came into view, slender columns of rune-carved stone. Dane heard the others shuffle along behind him. He watched above and below, but the mist obscured view of anything more than a few feet away. The sounds he’d heard from the other side of the door were markedly absent, and the air was heavy with moisture.
“What do those carvings say?” Cavus whispered, but in those vaulted halls his voice carried like a shout before fading into ghostly echo. The only wall Dane could see was the one behind them, and there was no ceiling in sight, so the columns just vanished into the mists overhead.
“Quiet!” Maddox commanded. His own voice thundered around them like a storm. Dane shook his head.
He moved deeper into the ice-blue fog. The veil lifted after a few dozen yards and the air turned dry. Cold stones set in the walls and floor illuminated the massive area. Dane’s eyes took in the breadth of their surroundings, and he couldn’t suppress a quiet gasp of awe.
Beyond the tendrils of mist stood a fortress-city carved into the black rock, an assembly of dozens of shadow-wreathed towers wrought of iron and stone. Vast spirals of grey quartz rose to the fog-shrouded ceiling. Cylindrical fortresses stood in the distance, massive dark structures of granite and lead topped with bladed crenelations.
The group spread out. More of the strange towers came into view, vast and dark and eerily silent. Tall windows peered down at Dane like hollow eyes. The structures were vast – even Kruje seemed tiny compared to the great towers, and Dane realized with cold terror that at some point many, maybe hundreds of Voss had filled those halls, monstrous creatures of morbid intellect and unending cruelty. The city must have taken centuries to build.
City of Scars (The Skullborn Trilogy, Book 1) Page 19
