The Great Restoration (A Tale of the Verin Empire Book 2)

by William Ray

  She took several deep breaths, staring at that white arch, knowing full well the dangers it represented. Dorna knew the Oblivion better than any other mortal soul, and surely this was why the Master had asked her to be the one to brave it with Edward Phand. Feeling an unwelcome surge of adrenaline, she softly recited the Elven words she had been taught, using the wave of their reassurance to steel her nerves for the task ahead.

  Popping open a tiny vial, Dougal waved it under Edward Phand’s nose, and the man groaned, his face twisting into a grimace. Whatever concoction the Master had provided to Dougal, the scent of it roused their charge to his feet, although his eyes remained closed and his stance woozily unbalanced. Dougal shed his robe and wrapped it around Edward Phand while Dorna retrieved her own robe from the carriage.

  Dougal began to fit Edward Phand with a gag, but once he had, the older man began groaning into it. It was a muffled sound, but even that would be far too dangerous, and after looking to her for confirmation, Dougal removed it. Dorna gripped Edward Phand by the shoulder, and under her guidance he staggered forward like a sleepwalker as she performed the ritual which opened the arch to the darkness beyond.

  Light from their side of the archway trickled into the labyrinth as they passed through, springing from the white tiles and briefly illuminating the ancient halls. For a moment, Dorna saw sparkling white columns stretching upwards into shadow. Then the way behind her closed, and all light abandoned them.

  Kneeling down, she found Edward Phand’s feet. She fetched the muffles from the pocket within his robe, and he obligingly raised one foot and then the other at her silent direction as she slid the soft fabric of the muffles over his shoes. She repeated the process for her own shoes, then stood and reached out for the nearest column, feeling a shudder of relief as she found it where she knew it would be.

  The Master had taught her the winding paths of the Oblivion when she was a girl, and because of his tutelage, she knew her way through it better than any of the other Wardens. She had, in turn, taught most of the other Wardens, starting them from familiar locations and guiding them through the darkness along a single path, over and over, until they could measure their footsteps without needing sight for guidance.

  In oppressive the dark, hearing only the shuffle of their robes and the thundering of their own hearts, many initiate Wardens lost their composure. The newest were always gagged, and the least trustworthy bound, lest their panic cause them to endanger themselves or their fellows as the Oblivion swallowed them. Though she could not see him, Dorna’s eyes turned towards where Edward Phand stood, wondering if it would have been better to risk his muffled moans than that he might recover enough to do something louder.

  Great danger lurked in these ancient halls, and without the Elven queen to control it, silence and darkness were all that kept trespassers like her safe.

  The Master assured them that the guardian the Elves had trapped in the darkness could see no better than they. In her decade of traversing the Oblivion, she had occasionally heard echoes of far-off movement and once swore she had seen a dim and distant light, but other Wardens had stories of hearing it breathe or cowering behind columns watching light stream to either side as it passed.

  There were no stories of closer encounters than those, which they all took to mean there were no survivors of closer encounters. Practice kept them hidden, and disciplined silence kept them alive. Still, even well-trained Wardens sometimes vanished in the Oblivion, either lost in the blackness or else discovered. They dared not even whisper here.

  Dorna felt the engravings on the column under her left hand but was never certain if they were symbols or figural sculptings. She longed to one day wander these halls with a light in hand and finally see what wonders she shuffled blindly past in darkness and silence. It was one more reason to make sure the Great Restoration finally came to pass.

  Taking a long, slow breath, she reached out and gripped Edward Phand’s shoulder with her right hand and began guiding him onward. Within the cool air of the labyrinth, every sound echoed loudly into the distance, so Wardens wore robes to reduce the noise of their movements to the softest rustle. If she lost her grip on him here, he might simply be lost forever.

  With her left hand, Dorna reached out to reassure herself against familiar landmarks, finding columns each at exactly the number of steps she expected. Normally she could navigate much of this opaque netherworld without needing to check, but pulling along the drugged engineer could throw off the length of her stride and her balance. Any mistake could be fatal here. Even being angled slightly too far to the right could make her lose their way.

  Their route would take over five thousand steps, and feeling her nerves fraying after only a few hundred, she tried thinking of her Elven prayer. That had seldom worked, and she found it useless now—she needed to hear the words, even if only whispered. A soft moan from her charge made her tense, heart thundering as she began to second-guess her decision to attempt this without the gag.

  She reached out for the next column, and her hand waved through empty air. Dorna’s heart thundered in her chest, and to fight her trembling, she forced herself to take slow, deep breaths. Edging slowly forward, her left arm waved back and forth, then she struck solid stone—the next column, just a few feet further than expected.

  Dorna shuddered, bowing her head to help quiet her breath of relief. Focusing on her Elven words had thrown off the count of her steps. The Master had faith in her to complete this last leg of the journey with Edward Phand in tow, and she needed to keep her faith in his judgment.

  Faith should not require constant reminders. Dougal was likely the second most trusted Warden, after her, and she had never seen him recite the words outside of a meeting. If he needed no affirmation of faith, despite the dark errands he was set upon, then neither should she.

  Her hand gripped the column, feeling the sharp corners of engraved detail press at her palm. The Oblivion smelled of nothing but powdered stone—the same honest fragrance her father had always worn when he returned from his work.

  She could not see this place, but feeling the stone beneath her hand again, she knew she was not lost. Silently, she scolded her fears; she knew precisely where she was and precisely how many steps into the darkness it took to get from this place to the next one. Nerves steadying again, she pulled Edward Phand along and resumed the count of her steps.

  The path they took now was seldom taken, not just because it seldom led to useful points but also because it held larger rooms with longer gaps between the walls or columns. Fewer landmarks meant it would be easier to lose the path. The largest such gap was to occur at her two thousand and fifth step, and she felt a surge of relief as she reached the low, linteled doorway on the other side of that gap, exactly as expected. She ducked her head and reached back to push Edward Phand’s head down as well.

  Edward Phand moaned softly, and that small sound echoed frightfully all around them. Dorna froze in place, listening intently, but there was nothing louder than the hammering of her heart, and the old man’s wheezing breathlessness. Her instinct was to clamp her hand over his mouth, but she worried that would incite more frequent noise, which could be more dangerous than the occasional unmuffled one.

  She urged him forwards, stepping lightly, and cringed as he moaned once more. Reaching back, she felt his face with her left hand and discovered his hood had fallen forward, covering his face, and she did her best to push it back out of the way. With that done, he grew quiet again, so she pulled him into motion once more.

  They continued like that for some time, the moments and distance hidden by endless black, and the only signifier of the passage of either was the count of her carefully measured steps. Focused on the counting, she sank into the mechanical repetition of her pace, followed by the sweep of her left hand as she sought the next bit of expected masonry.

  She might have passed through galleries, halls, small rooms, or enormous corridors, but she knew only the po
lished stone floor and the count of steps between her guideposts. The landmarks she drew surety from were not even things she could properly describe, merely familiar outcrops of sculpted stone under her hand, where expected.

  At her four thousand, six hundred and twenty ninth step, a series of distant clicks yanked her from that placeless reverie. In the endless echoes of the labyrinth, the Master had taught her it was difficult to know where things were by sound alone—a distant echo might be far closer than it seemed.

  Dorna gripped tighter to Edward Phand but kept moving. Adrenaline surged, and she felt the instinctual drive to move faster but knew that succumbing to that panic would throw off the count of her steps. She started to move her lips to the Elven words, but left them unvoiced. In silence, the words were no help at all, and eventually Dorna pushed them from her mind to keep focused on her counting.

  She struggled against the urge to take longer steps, but she increased her pace until she felt Edward Phand pulling back slightly as he stepped on the hem of his own robe. Grimacing, she slowed again and was relieved to find the next column only a few inches farther than expected—that momentary shuffle had not thrown off her count too badly.

  There was a low grinding sound, like heavy bags of sand being pulled along the ground, that seemed only yards away on her right. Whatever it was that slid along the floor, it sounded from the right side in several places at once, which made her realize it must be enormous. It kept going and going, and Dorna’s heart thundered in her chest, making her wonder if her heartbeat was loud enough to be heard.

  Then the clicking began again—two sets of six taps, some that echoed from ahead, some from behind. Dorna struggled to visualize what could possibly make those sorts of sounds.

  Realizing she had frozen in place, Dorna staggered forward, hand waving as she desperately sought out the next landmark even as she knew it was several steps further away, and was terrified that her reaching hand might somehow strike whatever was making that sound. A shiver of relief rushed through her as she finally gripped the column that marked her route, but the dragging sound continued, echoing from all around them.

  She was sweating profusely, and Dorna decided that Oblivion’s guardian must not hunt by scent, or surely it would have found them already. The Master said its senses were no sharper than theirs, that the silence and darkness kept them safe. She silently cursed at the trembling of her hands, worried this distraction might make her lose the way.

  If she lost her path, she could never find the way home again, and it wouldn’t matter whether what lurked here could find them. Steeling herself once more, Dorna pushed further into the black.

  The grinding sound continued and seemed neither softer nor louder. Did it follow? Did it just move parallel, biding its time to strike? Or was it simply so large that it occupied the entire distance she’d walked since first hearing it? Thinking back, she guessed that Oblivion’s guardian might well be over thirty paces long.

  But what was the clicking sound? She could not remember anyone ever describing that in their encounters. Had no one heard that part and lived to tell the tale?

  She shook her head, trying to marshal her faith without the Elven words to aid her. The darkness was deceptive. The Master had told her many times that the halls echoed strangely, and the different sounds might mean nothing. Discipline and silence kept them safe. Dorna pushed down the thundering in her chest and moved stubbornly onward.

  Her left hand touched upon the next expected corner, which she knew was the beginning of a wall. That wall would leave them cornered if the thing she heard came looking for them, but then, it wasn’t as if she could simply flee from her path even if it did. The wall meant one less direction for them to hunted from and a steady guidepost until it ended; it was a luxury she was profoundly grateful for.

  Edward Phand continued to stumble along with the languid shuffle of a sleepwalker. In his stupor, he was either indifferent or entirely ignorant of their danger, and Dorna thought that, in some ways, it made him more easily guided than an inexperienced Warden would have been.

  Then, once again, he gave a low groggy groan.

  Whatever weight was being dragged through the endless black of Oblivion’s corridors fell silent.

  There was a long pause, and Dorna pulled Phand back against the wall, staring wide-eyed into nothing as if curtains might suddenly part to reveal whatever it was that listened for them. Sometimes there was a light, in the distance, but she could not see it now and for the first time wondered if there might be two guardians. The Master had only ever mentioned it in the singular, but what if—

  There were several more clicks, much nearer now, and the dragging sound seemed to draw closer. Gripping Edward Phand tightly, Dorna pulled onward, moving as quickly as she dared and trying to adjust her count for the awkward stride and harried pace. The heavy sound she had already thought so close before felt closer and closer still.

  Its presence seemed to echo from behind them now. Did it follow along the same wall they did? The darkness is deceptive, she told herself. It could be on a parallel track. It could just be an echo. The darkness is deceptive. Still, she picked up her pace, using the advantage of travelling along the wall to ease her worries of the exact count.

  On and on they plunged, eventually reaching the end of the wall and crossing a gap of ten paces before the next landmark. She found it—a narrow jut of stone she always imagined was the end of a perpendicular wall. They pressed through that ancient archway, and she felt an electric thrill of relief as they turned left at the next smooth column of stone, just a few paces further. If it could not see them, then she dared hope that the turn of their path would lose it entirely.

  Edward Phand remained blessedly silent for several minutes more, and the sound behind them grew gradually more distant. Dorna staggered onwards, feeling breathless and suddenly desperate for rest, but she was too shaken to stop. Even once those sounds grew so distant she couldn’t hear them anymore, her heart continued to thunder, beating so hard that her chest hurt from the exertion.

  They reached the final wall. The count of her steps was off again but finally irrelevant as she felt her way along it, searching desperately for the velvety curtain that marked her exit from the Oblivion. She pulled Edward Phand through, pushing him ahead of her, so she could feel behind and make sure it had entirely closed before searching the indented stone behind it for the sigils that would open the portal and make good their escape.

  With a soft sliding of stones, the way was cleared, and she pushed Edward Phand through it and the second curtain beyond. After his slow passage, she simply fell inwards behind him, collapsing into the dim light beyond. She lay there panting for a moment, her cheek pressed to the scratchy carpet, then wiped her eyes before she looked up. Other than her charge, who stood a few feet away, the room was empty.

  In imagining her return, Dorna had always pictured the Master there to greet her, to congratulate her on a job well done, to honor her as the most faithful with the other Wardens gathered to witness her triumph. Pushing to her feet, she scolded herself for the hubris of that fantasy. Most of the Wardens had jobs to attend at this time of morning, and even the Master had appearances to keep. She was saving the world; she shouldn’t need accolades.

  Thinking of him reminded her that she could now finally recite the Elven words again, so she opened her mouth to begin them, then stopped.

  She had made it without the words. She had brought Edward Phand through as directed, crossing a distance no other Warden could have. The words had been a crutch, and her reliance on them had nearly made her lose her count in the Oblivion. Dougal didn’t need the words all the time, and she resolved to use them less as well; she would have faith in her faith.

  Edward Phand groaned again, and glaring over at him, Dorna fought the urge to kick the somnambulant engineer in punishment for his earlier noises. Her renewed sense of self-discipline restrained her, so as she was taught, before doing anything els
e, she adjusted the curtains behind her to make certain that the next time that portal opened, none of the dim light in this antechamber could leak through into the blackness beyond.

  Grabbing her dazed charge by the arm, she pulled him none too gently from the antechamber of the Oblivion and into a familiar hallway within the Master’s house. He was not waiting for her there either, but shortly after they stumbled in, his maidservant Mathil appeared, taking charge of Edward Phand and leading him away.

  Left to her own devices, Dorna felt neither celebratory nor accomplished, simply tired. She found the room set aside for her in his house and collapsed gratefully into her own bed, but despite her best intentions, sleep would not come.

  Adrenaline from their close call in the labyrinth still coursed through her, and without a mission to focus upon, Dorna’s thoughts tumbled uselessly. Her mission was successful, but much of it still did not sit well with her, despite the desperate necessity for the Great Restoration. She knew she could push those doubts away with the Elven words the Master had taught her, but having just promised herself to use them less, she stubbornly refused.

  Dougal had not needed them, and his path was darker than hers. Thinking of him brought a pang of guilt for the cabman’s murder but also shame for her failure to drive the blade home herself. The Master must have seen into her heart; he had known she would fail, that she didn’t have the will to do what was necessary to the plan, and that was why Dougal had been sent along as well.

  The Great Restoration would bring back a noble people to lead them down a better path, but until it was done, the Wardens were the ones who needed to hold back the evils of mankind. Thanks to the Master’s mercy, she had been taught that truth at a young age.