by Andy Hoare
TOMB OF THE GOLDEN IDOL
PART ONE
Andy Hoare
Khargrim Khargrimsson saw the trap before the girl did, his hissed warning echoing the length of the dark, stone-flagged tunnel and bringing the entire party to a sudden, tense halt. Grunting, the dwarf engineer shouldered his way forward and took position beside the kneeling Amazon.
‘You’d have blundered right into that one, girl,’ Khargrim whispered, though not unkindly. If a dwarf born of the cold mountains couldn’t see a trap better than a girl raised amongst the trees, then something was very wrong in the world. ‘Four yards on. The raised flag just before the turn.’
The girl, whose name was Karra Lakota, narrowed her eyes as she squinted into the darkness of the tunnel ahead. Khargrim had hired her as a guide, for she was a native of this part of the Lustrian jungle and claimed to know every ruin within a hundred miles. Her knowledge of the jungle had certainly paid off on the journey up river to the temple, but tunnels were a dwarf’s business, and Khargrim would have it no other way.
Karra snorted in obvious amusement, her sly grin distorting her garish war paint. ‘That is the decoy. The real one is three yards further on, at the turn itself.’
Khargrim raised a bushy eyebrow as he located the stone flag the Amazon had indicated. Cursing inwardly, he saw that she was right. The first stone was intended as a distraction, while the second, which was almost imperceptibly different to its neighbours, was the real trigger.
‘One tread on that stone,’ she said, making to stand once more, ‘and you would have been ground to paste under that block directly overhead.’
Khargrim glanced up to the ceiling, and saw that Karra was correct. The massive stone blocks of the ceiling were unerringly uniform, but one of them, the one directly over the pressure trigger Karra had seen, was ever so slightly different, its seams a fraction of an inch wider than the others.
‘My old grandsire never spoke a truer word when he said I’d never make a mason,’ Khargrim grumbled, hefting his warhammer as he made to follow Karra.
From just behind came the gruff burr of his old friend Ghurni Helvig. ‘Your old grandsire also said you’d never make an engineer, too.’
‘Be silent and get moving, Slayer,’ said Khargrim, clapping his old friend on the shoulder. ‘And the rest of you. Get moving, afore this place becomes our tomb.’
After that, Khargrim allowed the Amazon to lead the way through the winding, dark tunnels and echoing chambers beneath the Tomb of Destiny. Consoling himself that as an engineer his concern was for the crafting of war machines rather than the hewing of stone structures, he allowed his mind to focus on other things. Far from the least of those things was the riches said to lie in the vault of the Tomb of Destiny. With those riches he would be able to fund his experiments in the construction of ever more ambitious machines, and prove to the elders of the guild their error of judgement in expelling him from their order.
What had got Khargrim expelled so ignominiously from the dwarf engineers’ guild was his unquenchable wanderlust. Initially, Khargrim’s interest had been in steam-driven engines, for these were commonplace in Barak Varr, which was famed throughout the Old World for its fleets of ironclad sea vessels. Yet Khargrim had not been content with the machines as they were, and called into question venerated designs that had been adhered to for ages. That a mere youngster only barely into his eighties should dare question the designs of his elders and betters was bad enough, but it was Khargrim’s notion that the ships could be used to cross the Great Ocean that really landed him trouble. What dwarf worthy of his beard would want to explore the world, the people demanded when they heard of the engineer’s plans? Despite the objections of his peers as well as the common folk of his hold, Khargrim had continued his great work, ever determined to push the boundaries of the guild’s knowledge, regardless of the teachings of the elders.
Toiling in secret, Khargrim had constructed a vessel powerful enough to take him far, far over the horizon and into the uncharted reaches beyond. He had hoped for a glorious launch, and had even procured a cask of Bugman’s Stonebrew to break upon his ship’s prow to mark her maiden voyage. But the guild had discovered Khargrim’s plans, and he had been forced to bring forward the launch of his wondrous ship. His subsequent flight had brought him across the Great Ocean to the shores of Lustria, jungle continent of death and treasure in equal measure. The engineers’ guild had hushed the entire matter up, claiming that Khargrim was a charlatan and his ship had been sunk the instant it was lost to sight.
Well, Khargrim brooded as he stalked the dark tunnels of the tomb, I’ll show them… I’ll make my fortune, and use it to build an entire fleet of wondrous, long-ranged exploration ships.
‘You’re whittling over the guild,’ said Ghurni the Slayer walking at Khargrim’s back, his flaming torch held high. ‘Or are you just bitter that a human no-beard a fifth your age knows tunnels better than you?’
‘Bah!’ Khargrim grumbled, glancing up the tunnel towards the Amazon who was leading the party from the front, wickedly serrated dagger in one hand and a hissing torch in the other. She was clad in little more than feathers and skin-paint, and she moved like one of the abnormally large cats that stalked the teeming jungles.
‘I’m just wondering how far this tunnel runs,’ said Khargrim, making little effort to cover his changing of the subject.
‘Do you need to rest?’ Ghurni teased. ‘Are your young legs tired already?’
‘Nothing of the sort, old Slayer,’ Khargrim ribbed his friend back. ‘No, it’s not that. I am more concerned that things have been going a little too smoothly so far…’
As if the gods themselves had heard Khargrim’s statement and taken it for a challenge, the expedition’s progress changed greatly over the next few hours. First, one of the thralls Khargrim had hired was stung by a two-headed, scorpion-tailed snake and was dead within the minute. Next, Yngv, the truly ancient Baersonling shaman Khargrim had convinced to accompany the expedition, had almost triggered another trap. He had only been saved when the Graeling sea-maiden by the name of Verdandi had pulled him clear of the wide pit that opened up beneath him. Yngv, whose mind was a brittle thing to begin with, had snapped, and hadn’t stopped ranting for an hour.
Just when Khargrim was beginning to believe that the gods were truly mocking him, another of the party, the Varg hunter by the name of Ovar, had begun complaining that he was hungry so bitterly that the grizzled, wooden-legged Bjornling marauder called Thorkell had threatened to cast him into the next snake pit they had to cross if he refused to be silent. Soon, the entire party had descended into a raucous debate, with tribal grievances and petty recriminations echoing the length of the dusty tunnels.
Finally, Khargrim had had enough.
‘By the ancestors, be silent!’ he bellowed, his words so loud that a veil of ancient dust drifted down from the stones overhead. Patting the rune-etched head of his warhammer, Khargrim glowered from beneath the brow of his mithril helm, determined to cow the party into some semblance of order.
Silence descended, the various members of the party stopped in their tracks by Khargrim’s tone. Finally, he had their attention.
As more powdered masonry drifted downwards, Khargrim fixed his party with a withering stare. As the dusty, dirty faces glared back, Khargrim was acutely aware that he had promised these people much and that without any sign of reward he could scarcely blame them for growing restive. First some heads needed banging together, then some avarice needed appealing to.
‘Baersonling?’ Khargrim said to the old shaman. ‘If you would kindly furnish our Varg frie
nd with some sustenance?’
Muttering, Yngv produced a small, tattered purse and plunged his arm deep inside it. To a round of astonished exclamations, the shaman rummaged around, mumbling words of magical power that set Khargrim’s teeth on edge, though he hid his disquiet well. After a minute or so, the shaman exclaimed his success and pulled forth a large salmon, its flanks still glistening and wet, which he proffered to the wide-eyed hunter.
‘Er, Khargrim?’ said Ghurni as the engineer was preparing to move out.
‘I’m sure he has enough for us all–’ Khargrim began, before Ghurni interrupted.
‘The ceiling!’ said Ghurni, and every pair of eyes in the party glanced up towards the source of the rapidly growing shower of dust.
Khargrim blinked as he looked directly up at a huge stone block, its cracking mortar seams the source of the increasingly thick rain of dust. Even as he blinked the dust from his eyes, the seams widened further, and Khargrim knew with a cold dread what was about to happen. ‘Move!’
‘Which way?’ Ghurni shouted, the groaning of tortured stone growing louder as the walls started to tremble. ‘Back?’
‘Back?’ Khargrim exclaimed, barely able to believe Ghurni could misconstrue him so badly. ‘Onwards, of course. Move!’
Ghurni didn’t need to be told twice, and neither did the rest of the party. Karra led the way, springing forward lithely and dashing off along the tunnel. Verdandi was close behind, her Graeling sea bow stowed across her back. The Varg hunter Ovar wasn’t far behind the sea-maiden, his half-eaten meal gripped firmly between his teeth as he ran. Khargrim gave Ghurni a push, and soon the pair were speeding away down the tunnel as quickly as their legs would carry them. The oldest members of the party, the shaman Yngv and the Bjornling marauder Thorkell, were not far behind with the remainder of the Norse thralls bringing up the rear.
Reaching a bend in the passageway, Khargrim turned and looked back the way he had come, just in time to see Ghurni run past. Within seconds, the Slayer and the majority of the party were safely away but the tunnel was shaking so violently even the two dwarfs were almost pitched from their feet.
Then, the violent tremors reached a groaning crescendo and the flood of dust raining down from the straining seams became a torrent. The stone block crashed straight down, the resulting impact throwing every one of the party to the floor.
Shocking silence reigned, but not for long. The dust was so thick that everyone’s lungs were instantly clogged with the stuff, and fits of coughing, interspersed with colourful northern curses, soon echoed up and down the passageway.
Hawking up a gritty mass of phlegm, Khargrim cleared his throat and made an attempt to account for his companions. ‘Is anyone missing?’ he called out above the sound of coughing.
A round of acknowledgements sounded from within the all-encompassing cloud of dust.
‘Skellig’s dead,’ one of the thralls called out.
‘Let’s get moving,’ Khargrim ordered grimly.
‘Something’s wrong,’ Khargrim heard Verdandi call softly from further back along the line. ‘Engineer? I said–’
‘I heard you,’ Khargrim replied. ‘Everyone, halt.’
Though he loathed heeding the words of a human, Khargrim knew that this particular one was an explorer of prodigious skill who had trodden many forbidden places and knew her business well. She was also the finest archer Khargrim had ever seen. Just days earlier, she had fired an arrow into the eye of a Lustrian stega-wasp at three hundred paces. ‘What is wrong?’ he asked.
Ghosting forward, the sea-maiden passed silently along the line, her hand raised for silence. Somehow, the tall explorer had not a mote of dust upon her, while everyone else was covered head to foot. Edging forward into the shadows beyond the immediate glow of the spluttering torches the rest of the party held aloft, Verdandi tipped her head to one side as if listening to a sound only she could hear. Her mane of silver hair glittering in the darkness, the sea-maiden seemed intent upon…
‘A trap,’ she whispered, soliciting a dark glance from Ghurni. ‘Oh, but it’s a clever one…’
‘What do you see?’ Khargrim hissed as he moved forward as softly as he could. ‘And where?’
‘Ahead, deep, deep in the shadows, engineer,’ she replied.
Khargrim looked, unwilling to accept that a human could see better than a dwarf. But then, Khargrim saw what the sea-maiden had seen. The dust up ahead was far deeper than the areas through which they had already travelled, and the stones of the wall somehow smoother. The ceiling was thick with matted spider webs, as if countless generations of the creatures had lived and died within that single, short stretch of tunnel.
‘Witchery,’ Khargrim spat. ‘No mistaking it.’
One silver eyebrow raised, Verdandi replied, ‘Were it so simple to classify, engineer. No, this is no simple cantrip, but something far, far older.’
‘Aye,’ said Khargrim. ‘And it’ll make us far, far older, if we step further. Whatever spell has been cast upon that tunnel will age us what, a thousand years?’
‘Far more than that, Khargrim,’ the sea-maiden responded archly. ‘There is high slann magic at work here. I have walked too many ancient places beyond the seas to mistake it for ought else. A thousand years to them is but the blink of an eye.’
‘Well, we can’t go back,’ said Khargrim, his mind racing to find a way through the magically protected stretch of passage. His eyes narrowed as they alighted upon the form of Yngv, the mad old shaman glowering at his companions. After a moment, Yngv sensed Khargrim’s scrutiny.
‘Yngv,’ said Khargrim in the most comradely tone he could manage under the circumstances. ‘You told me once you tried to sneak into the high temple at Genaina?’
Karra shot the shaman a dark look, and the old Baersonling looked away. Genaina was a place sacred to Karra’s people, and even though she was an outcast of her tribe the thought of a man like Yngv sneaking around it was clearly abhorrent to her.
‘What of it?’ said Yngv defiantly.
‘You said you used some spell to get past the devouts, if I remember correctly.’
‘I did.’
‘You got past the devouts?’ Karra interjected.
‘Never mind that now, Karra.’ Khargrim raised a hand to silence the Amazon. ‘I need to know. Yngv, you got past the sentinels guarding the inner sanctum…’
‘What?’ said Karra.
‘Could you do so again, right now?’ Khargrim pressed on, ignoring the furious Karra as he struggled to communicate to the shaman just how serious a predicament they were in.
Yngv nodded and moved forward to get a look at the stretch of tunnel. ‘Oh my…’ he said, his bearded, wizened face draining of colour.
‘Can you get us past or not?’ Khargrim asked impatiently.
‘Aye,’ said the shaman, drawing himself to his full height. ‘There’s an incantation I formulated in a cave on the coast of the Sea of Claws. Kept the frost wyrms at bay for a whole season.’
‘Will it get us through?’
‘It will,’ said Yngv, his face suddenly alight with intense purpose. ‘Move aside, all of you,’ he said as he pushed his companions back along the tunnel.
Holding his staff before him, Yngv began his invocation. At first, it sounded as if he was just mumbling, but it wasn’t long before Khargrim sensed the presence of magic stirring in the air all around him. Like most dwarfs, Khargrim was deeply untrusting of any magic not contained within a rune, for most other races wielded it in such a way as to invite their own destruction. The dwarfs knew that the winds of magic were not to be hurled around like crude weapons. They were to be refined, contained and controlled with precision and instinct, a talent granted only to the master runesmiths of their race.
Yngv’s mumbling grew louder until the shaman’s hair was bristling with the sheer amount of power he was drawing into
his body. Khargrim grit his teeth, for the winds of magic always set them on edge, while Ghurni looked distinctly unwell.
Then the shaman slammed his staff into the stone ground, making the thick carpet of ancient dust jump. His incantation grew all the louder and the air seemed to become heavy. The space about the shaman shimmered and the carpet of dust was pushed back as by an invisible circle emanating from the staff. With the dust of ages dispelled, the stonework beneath was revealed as clean and precisely cut as the day it had been set in place, not a single mote of dirt besmirching its surface.
‘Quickly,’ Yngv hissed, his voice strained and his features twisted in concentration. ‘Follow me!’
Yngv stepped forward and the carpet of decay was pushed back before him. Khargrim was at his side in an instant, closely followed by Ghurni and Verdandi.
‘Stay close,’ Yngv warned as he advanced, the air around him shimmering as the weight of aeons was pushed back. The air Khargrim breathed changed from the musty, dust-ridden quality of the underground tunnel to the fresh, clean taste of a brand new day. The light of the party’s torches seemed somehow purer too, and where Khargrim trod the stone flags were solid and even.
As he walked, Khargrim glanced behind to ensure everyone was following, only to see that an argument had broken out between a number of the hireling thralls.
‘Hurry!’ Khargrim hissed, knowing that if they didn’t follow now they would be left behind.
Hearing his warning, the group stopped their bickering for a moment, but resumed it almost immediately. Rarely was Khargrim surprised by the stupidity of men, but this was a particularly bad time to fall out with one another.
‘If you don’t get moving right now…’ he called, aware that the shaman’s magical field was moving away from the thralls.
‘I’ll not heed him!’ one of the thralls growled. ‘Not after what happened to Skellig.’
‘And the rest of you?’ Khargrim called out as he backed along the tunnel, each step keeping him near the shaman but taking him further from the smaller group. ‘Do you want to be buried here too?’
