The Black Keep (The Chronicles of Llars)

by Tom Bielawski

  How had that thing gotten up? Carym saw this happen in the blink of an eye while he continued to dance with the skilled fighter before him; he was dimly aware of more flashes of blue light above his head. Finally he had been able to grab hold of the shaft of the deceptively speedy creature’s polearm. The little olive skinned creature only grinned showing his pointed fang-like teeth and drew two long fighting daggers. Then, quick as a lightning strike, the little man abandoned his polearm and advanced in a blur of cold steel daggers and shining teeth. Carym was forced to block with his shield as he stepped back and away from the biting blades, then the creature scored a hit to Carym’s arm above the protection of his shield. The surprising strength of that impact was far too great for so small a person, and Carym actually fell back a step from it. He was amazed to find he had been unscathed; that hit should have flayed his arm open!

  Carym accepted the momentum of the fall and turned it into a roll, allowing him to quickly recover and regain his footing. The Cklathman dove forward, driving his sword blade deep into the trok’s chest between the ribs. Instead of slowing it down however, the strike seemed only to awaken the little beast further. With both daggers the creature attacked Carym again, intentionally pulling itself down the blade impaling itself further just to reach its human assailant. After receiving a wicked slash across his shoulder, Carym let go of his sword and viciously kicked the creature in the gut sending it reeling backwards to the ground. By now enough of the still struggling creature’s blood had drained from it to cause the beast to weaken. It weakly rose to its knees, sword still in its chest and swung its dagger blades drunkenly, before finally slumping to the ground. Carym sensed that the battle around him had ceased and he stood breathing hard, one hand on his aching, but unwounded, shoulder.

  Carym glanced quickly around to see if his friends had fared as well as he, suddenly worried for Gennevera. Then he spotted her near the Gefar, tending his minor wound and Carym was relieved. He approached the woman and gazed at her fondly, she was a good fighter.

  “What were those things?” Carym asked, wondering if his childhood nightmares had come to life.

  “Trok-Syth!” grumbled Gefar. “Weren’t no worse sort to just stumble across neither! Bound to be more of ’em about too!”

  “Also known as Spider Elves,” said Yag. “Nasty mean disposition. ’Tis said the little beasties like to eat the ears and noses from their victims.” Yag gave the dead body of a nearby trok a solid kick for good measure. “Hard as the Seven Hells to kill, too!”

  “Looting I could understand. But why would the troks be in this particular house, of all the buildings in this vast city, and not have taken any of the abundant gemstones and metal from inside?” Carym asked quietly.

  “The little demons were lookin’ fer somthin’, fer sure!” muttered Gefar. “Ain’t never heard a no trok passin’ up a bit of plunder if he been havin’ the chance!”

  Carym had heard of the Trok-Syth and everything he had heard came rushing back to him. Had he known they were about to engage the nefarious Trok-Syth, he wasn’t so sure his courage would have held. He shrugged off the emotion of the event and focused on the task at hand. He and Gennevera entered the mansion and conducted a sweep while Gefar and Yag searched the bodies of the troks to see what they were about. Finding nothing other than some copper money and their poorly made weapons, the men dragged the dead back into the house and took up watch from the doorway hoping to have a more defensible position should another band of troks find them.

  Carym and Gennevera swept through the large home but found little different from what he had seen in the houses by the docks. The people who lived here long ago were so rich that the poorest among them were wealthier by far than nobles and kings on the surface. Aside from the decadence and the abundance of precious metal and stone furniture and the building itself, there was little to indicate who had lived here and no clues to a needed method of escape.

  “Thank you for your help back there,” Carym said suddenly to Gennevera, as though he had suddenly remembered his manners. “Your powers are remarkable and certainly aided us against these little demons.” Carym sighed deeply, knowing full well that there was no coincidence in stumbling upon the troks. They had to have been sent by Umber.

  “Would that I could have done more,” she said, eyeing him warmly. “Troks are the wickedest of the elvenkind, and the most reclusive. I wonder, truly, if they are of the elvenkind at all; some would say not.”

  “What else do you know of them?”

  He saw an interesting desk, made of silvery metal with sliding drawers. The pulling sensation from the stones in his pocket was strong now, pulsating in his head, urging him closer to the desk. As he opened the drawers one by one it looked as though the desk may have held papers long ago; all that was left was dust. As he opened the center drawer of the desk, a key fell noisily into the drawer. He looked closer and saw that it had been secured, somehow, to the underside of the desk and whatever had held it in place these long centuries gave way when he opened the drawer. He picked up the key and examined it, dimly aware that Gennevera had answered his question.

  “They are, in some ways, worse even than the Frost Elves of the north. Nonetheless, the Trok-Syth are a subterranean race of elves. They are all very short and cruel to the last. It is said that torture is a way of life and Trokkish parents routinely torture or kill their own children for their failings. Those that survive to adulthood are the worst sort of creatures you could imagine.”

  Having fathered a child, Carym was enraged by the thought that a parent of any race could be so cruel to a child; even the hurkin weren’t that cruel! He focused on the unusual key in his hand, very much unlike a skeleton key, yet a key nonetheless. He tried to locate the lock that it was intended to open and assumed it must be hidden somewhere in here. Was this what the trok’s were after?

  “Gennevera, did you notice anything unusual about me earlier?” he asked quietly. She looked at him with her dark eyes, and he found it hard to concentrate for a moment.

  “I saw a very brave man fighting very evil and wicked beings to save his friends; and that is unusual.” Her comment warmed his heart and he returned to his search for the device, forgetting why he had asked her.

  “Of all the houses in this city, why this one? What could the troks be looking for in here when they clearly had not pilfered anything of value?” Carym asked, walking through the room. “Could they have been sent here by Umber to ambush us?”

  “It is hard to say. Of the troks I know there are many tribes who vie for power with each other, often fighting amongst themselves. Very little is known about them.”

  Gennevera moved from the main part of the office to a large closet. The woman assumed the owner must have been very important to have such a large office in his home. As she entered the closet a light attached to the ceiling turned on by itself startling her for a moment, then she realized it was an enchantment. She marveled at the ingenuity of the enchantments used here. Carym shook his head in wonder and continued his search about the mansion.

  “These troks must be looking for something powerful, which means there are likely to be others about and in greater numbers,” Carym said as he continued to examine the desk for hidden panels; Zach was so much better at this sort of thing.

  Walking into the closet Gennevera saw piles of dust and strands of fabric that surely had once been clothing. In the back wall of the grand closet was the outline of a small door; it was very faint even to her sharp elven eyes. She placed her hand on the wall and traced the outline of the door with her hand finding a small catch just large enough for her fingernail. She pulled lightly and to her surprise the door swung open revealing a large lockbox with a thin layer of dust covering the surface. She very gently brushed aside the dust and looked more closely at it.

  The box itself was beautiful to behold, it was made of shiny silvery metal with remarkable wooden strips lovingly and carefully attached to the lengths of each side. These pie
ces of wood molding were dark and sturdy and inlaid with golden flowery script. For long moments she studied the scripts to identify their origin, but she could not. Grymm had granted her no spells that would enable her to read a foreign script, let alone one that was likely dead for centuries.

  “Carym,” she called, quietly. “I believe I have found your lock!”

  Carym hurried into the large closet, which was wide enough for him to stand beside her with room to spare, yet he nonetheless stood very close to her. “Is it warded with magic?”

  “I sense nothing from within, but let me be more thorough.” She drew a small obsidian stone from her pocket and chanted softly, passing her hand across the inscriptions. As if in response to her quiet, softly spoken spell, each of the letters flared to life in a warm yellow light, twinkling like a candle.

  “What does that mean?” asked Carym.

  “It means that this safe was crafted by someone skilled in the art of bonding; the process of imbuing a mundane item with magical properties.”

  “But don’t wizards use mundane objects for magical purposes? Enchanted weapons and armor, wands of power, that sort of thing?”

  “Yes, but this is different. Bonded items were powerful devices that could grant magical powers to ordinary people. This item is, in and of itself, magical and I have no way of knowing what it is capable of.”

  “It’s beautiful!” he whispered, studying the box for a moment. He had the peculiar sensation that this item was emitting a silent call, a beacon, which had lured him here through the stones in his coat. In fact, looking closer, he saw that there were several small bowl-shaped depressions forming a circle around the keyhole.

  Faint sounds from outside reminded Carym that danger still lurked in Lordsdeep and they had better move along. He placed the key into the lock, hoping that there were no traps and wishing his friend Zach were here to guide him. He took a deep breath and steadied himself, then turned the key. Surprisingly the key turned with no effort and, as surprising, there were no needles with poison tips or deadly poison darts flying from the opposite wall.

  But the safe would not open. The pulsating energy of the stones in his coat were sending waves of energy through his body, and when he touched the safe he felt a thrill as energy coursed through him causing the scripts to flare again. Gennevera looked at him in awe.

  “How did you do that?” she asked.

  He jerked his hand back and the scripts faded again. He didn’t answer the woman, just stared at his hand and remained keenly aware of the stones. Now, as in answer to the flaring light of the script, the bowl-shaped depressions were gleaming with different colored lights, each one corresponded to the color of a stone in his pouch. He reached into his pocket and a stone veritably jumped into his hand. He took it out and saw that it was the red stone, though its color had changed somewhat and now it was streaked with golden bolts of lightning. He stared at it a moment and Gennevera laid a cautionary hand on his shoulder.

  “What is that?” she asked him.

  Without answering and without a second thought, he placed the stone into the depression that had shined with a golden red light.

  The world seemed to change then and he was momentarily blinded. He barely registered the sound of Yag coming up the stairs, calling his name.

  Suddenly he could see again, and he panicked. He whirled about, almost knocking Gennevera over, and drew his sword fearing he had been subject to some sort of magical assault. They were now in a room, a chamber of sorts, and it was deathly quiet. So quiet he could hear every breath he and Gennevera took, every rustle of clothing, every movement of a shoe on the polished wooden floor. They stood there silently, wary, waiting for an attack of some kind.

  But there was nothing.

  After a few cautious minutes, and not for one second believing the danger was over, the pair nodded to each other and moved about the room. And what an interesting room it was! It seemed to be a luxurious apartment of high splendor that one might find in a royal palace anywhere else. There were three rooms altogether, and only one door. The main room possessed a hearth, several luxurious pillowed chairs of rich velvet each with its own footrest, thick and soft throw-rugs, and smoothly paneled walls of mahogany. Another small room was visible at one end, and this was little more than a storage area of sorts. Gennevera tried to use her magic to detect dangers, but her magic would not respond.

  The room had stores of food and supplies, doubtless centuries old, but in amazingly usable states. In fact many of the items were held in brilliantly designed containers that would not let in the degrading presence of air and moisture.

  They left the small room, crossed back through the first room passing the large hearth to the door. It appeared to be a normal door of dark mahogany, and it was nestled into its frame so perfectly that the gaps between door and frame were almost unnoticeable. Carym cautiously tried the door but it was locked and would not budge.

  “Now what?” he whispered to himself with a sigh. Trapped like rats. “Where on Llars are we?”

  “Perhaps we shall find an answer in the last room,” whispered Gennevera in return.

  Carym nodded and followed her cautiously into the last room. This room was apparently a study of sorts. There were a number of tables throughout and one desk at the front. There were many shelves containing books, jars, boxes, and papers scattered about. There were chairs too, some on the floor as though knocked over in haste. The tables were not arranged in any neat fashion one might expect.

  There were no other doors, no windows, no other way out that either of them could see as they traversed the room. Carym approached the great desk at the front of the room and looked at it in awe. “Look at this,” he said quietly. Gennevera joined him at the desk and said something in her own language.

  The desk was beautiful and made of dark mahogany and inlaid with that same golden script that adorned the odd box they had been looking at only moments before. “The box...” he said quietly, trying to remember what happened after the sudden flash.

  “What?”

  “The box we were looking at. I placed the red stone in the hole on the front of the box and that’s when we ended up here.” Carym turned very quickly and walked back to the main room and stood in the same place where they had appeared. He was standing by the hearth now and above the hearth was a small panel. As he looked more closely he saw that it was the same size and shape as the door to the safe. It had six circular shapes, bowl shapes, only these were protruding inward instead of outward and one glowed with a faint red gold light. And there was a key hole in the center!

  “What is going on here?” he asked himself, although he had a sinking feeling he knew the answer.

  “Dear God!” said Gennevera to herself, covering her mouth with her hands.

  Carym turned quickly to look at her. “We are inside the box!”

  Carym felt his stomach twist as Gennevera confirmed what he had suspected.

  “Trapped,” he said dejectedly.

  “No,” she said excitedly. “Not trapped at all. This is a secret chamber of power, a lab, a study, or who-knows-what!” She moved her hand across the panel that served as door to the small box that they were now standing in. “Whatever you did out there, brought us in here; you opened a doorway through which we crossed into a little pocket in the Fabric of Creation!”

  “But how do we leave?” he was not as thrilled as the Keneerie woman was with their discovery.

  “I’m not sure yet, but it has to be fairly simple. Getting in was easy enough. You turned the traditional key, then placed the stone in the appropriate slot and...here we are. Getting out could be as simple as a reverse application!”

  “But, we can neither reach the stone nor the key from inside.” Carym tried in vain for several minutes to push and feel and probe around the panel that should lead them out of this bizarre place.

  “That does present a problem. However, there is so much knowledge in here, surely we can find something to give us clue
on how to get out!”

  “But how will we read anything in here? Your magic will not work and neither of us can read this ancient script.” Carym was momentarily hopeful, but found himself despairing. Gennevera took the sword from his hand, and leaned it against the wall. Then she took both of his hands in hers, leaned forward and kissed him. He felt a surge of energy from his head to his toes and for a moment, giddiness took over control of his stomach from despair.

  “My dear, you should not be so pessimistic,” she said playfully.

  “So says the Sister of Grymm,” he jibed back, with a smile. “Fine, lead on my lady!”

  Gennevera led Carym back into the study and the pair began looking through anything they could find. Luckily the old books were in pristine condition, each page had been treated with a resin of some sort, making it smooth to the touch and protecting it from external harm. As Carym had feared, most of the books were written in ancient script; gibberish. Yet, Gennevera found that a few were in fact Sigilbooks holding the keys to many of the spells of power used by ancient Sigilists.

  Gennevera held one book in her hands lovingly for a time, her eyes closed. The book was crimson with golden script and myriad symbols on cover and spine. The pages were neat and the writing precise. There were illustrations on some pages, but she was not a Sigilist and Sigilspells were beyond her.

  “Unfortunately, I am not blessed with the power of the Sigils. Not to mention that magic doesn’t seem to work here,” she said wryly, as she placed the spell book reverently on the floor next to Carym’s sword in the other room, then returned to her search.

  Carym sat behind the large desk carefully opening drawers, hoping there were no more magical surprises. Gennevera assured him that these chambers were designed to be anti-magical and she was confident there would be no more surprises.

  “However, mundane traps and poisons aren’t beyond the realm of possibility.”

  “Wonderful.”

  After what felt like hours of searching through old, but well preserved books, Carym leaned over the desk and rested his head on his hands. “The others will be worried sick!” he groaned.