by Chris Turner
They wormed their way forward on their bellies, hardly daring to breathe.
Crumbled pillars ranged around them, forming something of crude circle. Elsewhere the stubs of three rows of ruined inner pillars rose. In between the tallest foremost, a cracked statue of a unicorn stood rearing on its hind legs. The effigy was awe-inspiring, if not scary. An altar, some low slab of marble propped up on carved unicorns’ legs, rose out of the splintered stone like a monolithic ghost of the past.
This cavernous space was huge and littered with broken masonry of sublime and eerie design, half-broken statues of leaning pillars. At one time the place had been beautiful, a work of art, with magnificent paintings on the walls and designs carved in the domed ceiling, but these had all cracked or disintegrated, or lost the battle to vines over the ages. A pool of water lay in the centre, investing the air with a musty smell. The rustle of rats bristled in the gloomy distance.
Risgan stared on high, trying to make sense of the dim shadows. Giant statues of unicorns and half unicorns with human bodies lined the upper galleys. A stair had once given access to the tiny, vine-shadowed windows on high, but it had long disappeared, crumbled to ruin and lay toppled in stony desolation. No way of getting up to those windows to pluck the gems that to a relic hunter’s eye would be worth a rare fortune.
An agonized snorting alerted him. In the near distance they discovered new horror: Arcadia’s horse, Spinifex lay sprawled in an pitiful heap. Evidently the mare had slipped on the shattered tone and broken its hind leg.
Where was Arcadia? The animal, still wheezing and struggling, would have to be put down.
Shouts and the clack of steel echoed from within. The huntsmen.
“Come!” Risgan snarled at the others. They picked themselves up from their bellies and raced after.
There before the altar four figures loomed.
Risgan held up a hand and crept closer, urging his comrades to stealth.
Svengar brandished the golden arrow, plainly wrested from Arcadia, and his two henchmen pinned her against the wall. She looked lost and defeated, her hair tousled and a bright red welt across her cheek where she’d been struck. Her arrow was snatched again, at the mercy of these ruffians, and her horse lay mortally wounded.
“Let’s have some sport with the woman before she’s wed to our ‘lord’.” A mean-eyed lout gazed at her, licking his lips. “She looks a tender morsel. No one’ll know, and I’ll make sure she doesn’t talk, won’t I, mistress?”
“Get away from me, you pig!”
A faint smile tugged at the corners of Svengar’s lips but he scowled. “It’s a pleasant thought, Burkit, but I’m not in the mood for such rompings, especially in these dank precincts. Such an unpleasant environment. God, I hate these holy places, especially mouldering ones. Though I’d like to see her punished and humiliated, if not cowed for losing me that unicorn. Strip her!” he ordered.
“With pleasure, lord.” The mean-eyed man leered and ripped at her jerkin and bared a breast while the other held her.
Svengar sneered. “Where’s your unicorn god now, lady?”
“How about here?” Risgan looked down at them cheerfully from the altar. He’d crept up behind it and crawled up the back. “I’d wisely suggest you unhand the woman, Svengar, and step back slowly, unless you wish my bully-boy archer here to lay you full of wood.”
Kahel stepped out of the shadows with his bow and Jurna at his side, broadsword brandished. Hape and Moeze were next to appear, Moeze’s silver disc whirling.
The hunters growled and froze. Arcadia twisted in her leather and covered herself up.
Svengar whirled about. “You? Outlander. I have bones to pick with your mangy hide.” He nodded to his henchman. They did nothing to obey and he growled a gross insult to let Arcadia loose. She stumbled past Svengar and lurched, reaching for the arrow, but he pulled it back at the last second and leered at her. She spat in his face.
She came running toward Risgan, on the verge of tears. Risgan grabbed her and held her in his arms. “There, are you hurt, milady? Moeze, see to her!”
Risgan signalled to the journeyman. “Jurna. Divest these cretins of their weapons.”
He gave a cheerful nod.
“Milady, you are hurt.”
The huntress clutched her left arm and shoulder. “’Tis nothing, Risgan. Those brutes, I thought they were going to—to—”
Another echo clanked from down the hall. Horsemen by the clatter of their hooves. The members of Risgan’s company crouched, tensed.
Svengar grinned. “Well, relic hunter. Your move. It seems matters move to a new condition. What will you do?”
Risgan thought fast, his eyes darting right and left. Even as they did, some horrendous sliding of stone came to his ears, like fingernails dragging across an endless chalkboard. A massive stone fell, creating a booming echo, blocking the entrance and much of the light with it, plunging them in deeper gloom. Dust billowed and men shrieked.
Svengar and his men bolted. Bedlam broke out in the half gloom.
Risgan hissed. There was no mistaking that hulking form, walking his black mount. Mygar. Two shadows and more followed him. Horsemen. Others crept behind him at his heels.
But the crashing boom? Mygar or one of his henchmen must have triggered an ancient snare. Risgan and his allies grimaced and crept for shelter. Now they were all trapped in this preternatural temple of some ancient goddess.
Risgan rallied the others with silent gestures and he ducked behind a rubble of a fallen pillar with Moeze and Jurna at his side, checking his breathing, daring not breathe. He didn’t know where the others were, he just hoped they would stay quiet and keep out of sight.
He heard Svengar hissing to Mygar in the gloom. “So you found us.”
“Not hard to track your blundering trail.”
“You know of this place?”
“I’d think some foul crypt or temple to their pansy-faced god. How do I know?” Mygar’s eye roved to the arrow Svengar clutched in his hand. “Where did you get that?”
“Arcadia had it on her.”
“Arcadia?” Mygar blinked. “What do you mean?”
“She was here, and is still lurking about somewhere. I tore it from her grasp before—”
“Before what?”
Svengar licked his lips. He looked away.
“Damn you, you stupid oaf. You let her escape?” Mygar leaned over and smacked Svengar hard on the mouth.
Svengar whipped his head back, wiping the blood from his lip. “You’re getting good at those pot shots, Mygar. Even for one who struts around like some lumbering animal who can’t even control a few weakling clansmen.”
“Careful there, Sven. You’re treading on thin ground.”
“And so what if I am? Those ragbags stole the arrow from right under your nose. I got it back. Now they are laughing at you.”
“Where are they?” the chief snarled.
Svengar flung up a hand. “Here somewhere with the girl. The same grubby thieves who you let live. Mr. Big hunter and chief.”
Mygar’s eyes kindled with wrath. “Svengar, you’re an ungrateful cur. I gave you everything! That title. That horse, loyal men and command, and what do you do, you mock me?”
Svengar’s face twisted in confusion, perhaps regretting his words, but the ball had rolled down a slippery slope and there was no stopping it now.
Yet Mygar was distracted and his eyes rolled with greed at the sight under the vine-covered stone. Serpentine was embedded in the altar, a deep jade hue. Such was worth a fortune in the open markets of the cities.
“Burn this place!” bellowed Mygar. “Loot the altar, carve out those emeralds. I want them now!”
“But lord,” spoke one of his men, “the jewels have lain here for an age. No one has taken them. Perhaps they are cursed.”
“Shut up!” Mygar swatted him away. “Take them and be gone. Driadis be damned. We’ll ride to Caerlin and burn that bloody pigsty to the ground. Stupid traitors.
”
A sinuous shape suddenly rose from behind the vine-covered altar, glowing a pale luminous blue. A slender figure rose from the gloom in a swirl of misty grey cloud, wearing the head or headdress of a unicorn, but having the body of a woman, nude to the waist.
“What sorcery is this?” cried Mygar in a brassy tone. The horses bolted, spooked by the apparition.
Svengar laughed. “So, Mygar, are you going lame on us? It’s the druid’s work, this ghostly spook. Or that incompetent magician’s.”
“Moeze?”
“None other. Last time he was skulking about the druid’s hut accused of being accomplice of the thievery of the arrow—Now he’s here. Though how that nitwit conjured this up is beyond me.”
“His magic can still kill.” Mygar stared fearfully at the hovering apparition.
“He couldn’t burn himself out of a paper bag. Him or his puerile pyrotechnics.”
Svengar’s eyes bulged white and he clutched his throat and bent over double. His two men recoiled, grimacing. The goddess rose, or rather the unicorn who was the goddess rose, a luminous avatar that cast cold unicorn eyes upon the villains before her.
Mygar sneered. “Out of a paper bag, eh, Svengar? You silly fool! There’s magic here at work. Look at it. And you’ve insulted the gods.”
Svengar wrenched himself out of the invisible grip clutching his throat. He choked on his tongue, gasping for air. “Wizardry!” he croaked. He clawed for his sword. “Search this place. Flush out the magician.” His head turned. A sudden motion came in the dark. “Ah, there he is. Lop off his head.”
Risgan gave a warrior’s cry and surged in, smiting Mygar’s men. Moeze was on his heels, his silver disc shimmering.
“A barrel of mead to the man who gives me that magician’s head,” cried Svengar, “served in fresh blood!”
Risgan’s club thudded against the fur-cloaked hides of his enemies. Jurna was at his other side. Kahel drew the string on his trusty bow and plugged arrows into the fray while Arcadia faced off against Mygar’s closest hunter.
“Ah, my little flower,” called Mygar. “You are here. I was beginning to think Svengar a trifle mad.”
Arrows flew at them but Moeze’s spinning disc cast a warp on the air and caught the arrows in its glowing swath. Risgan’s heart stopped as one curved aside, aimed for his chest. While the men stood stunned, Hape ran up behind them and conked them on the head with rocks.
The battle raged; men died and cried out as blood splattered the crumbled altar of Driadis and ran thicker still. And still the goddess floated on high like a nimbus of wonder, as if reluctant to intercede in the petty squabbles of foolish mortals.
Svengar gained control of his senses and fired the arrow; it missed Risgan’s head by a hair—the relic hunter could still feel the wind of it—as it ricocheted off the grey stone behind him and smashed some hanging stone projection. It must have struck some lever, for a strange grinding sound echoed in the hall. The floor underneath the fighting figures jerked sideways; everyone was knocked off their feet.
True to its enchanted form, the magic arrow came sweeping back along its rainbow arc and began its descent back to the bearer. Svengar lay nose first on the cold, moving stone, his face a ghastly grimace as the worst was yet to come. The arrow’s light illuminated the ancient hall in multi-colored clarity. All saw the floor slide back, as if by magic.
Risgan teetered on his heels, swaying, catching at the last minute the edge of floor, as the stone opened up underneath him. Hape and Moeze jumped to safety, grabbed an arm each and hauled Risgan up. He lay there gasping beside Arcadia and the others. Mygar and his henchmen plunged down in the pit with the wails and groans of Svengar and the last survivor in his ear. Two had cracked their skulls on impact.
The survivors gasped as one of the horses fell too, breaking a leg on the floor of a great rectangular pit, fifteen feet deep of sheer sides. They untangled themselves from a knot of arms and legs and blinked; Svengar crouched, shaking his head, snatching at the magic bow that lay at his side and fitting an arrow in its strings.
“What is it?” demanded Jurna in puzzlement.
“I don’t know. Some pit. Arcadia?”
“Never seen anything like it,” she murmured.
Risgan cautiously peered over, only to see the glint of the magic arrow of Svengar’s aimed his way. He pulled his head back. The arrow shot up and whizzed by his ear to smack somewhere else up on the ceiling. Risgan swore. It came arching back into the pit, its diamond tip unscathed.
“That thing’s dangerous.”
“Rotten losers,” Jurna grumbled.
“Let’s kill them all.” Kahel gripped his bow and drew near the edge of the pit in a bent-kneed crouch to peg off Svengar.
“Wait! I’m sick of killing,” cried Arcadia. “We’ve done enough killing.” She stepped in front of Kahel, blocking his shot. “It’s a miracle any of us are still alive. Only the fruits of the goddess’s work. I’ve been praying to her. Perhaps that’s what this is all about. Maybe this is what she’s planned for them.”
“What about the arrow?” snapped Jurna. “It’s down there with those scum.”
Arcadia pinched her lip. As much as any, she was reluctant to let the arrow go. It seemed that a war of wills passed within her.
Jurna gestured. “I tell you what you do, huntress, let them starve down there. Come back in a month or two and get your arrow. Then they’ll just be a bag of bones.”
She wrinkled her nose at that. “It’s a gruesome idea.”
A curse came from below, as of acknowledgement of the idea.
Risgan looked down and ducked at the sight of Svengar pointing the arrow up at him. He rubbed his chin, racking his brain for a solution to the problem.
“They deserve nothing more than to suffer a cruel fate,” rumbled Kahel.
Mygar shook his fist up at them. “We can pick you off all day!”
Risgan shrugged. “It’s your call, mistress.”
She bit her lip. “They’ll stay here. I’ll send for some horsemen at a later time, if I feel pity in my heart.”
“If we can get out of here,” Moeze pointed out.
Kahel shook his head. “I still say we should kill them.” He crept over to the edge, dipping back with a growl. “We have the high ground. I can peg Svengar off from up high.”
Risgan pulled him back. “No. Arcadia’s decided.”
“You’re a fool, Risgan.”
“Well, I’ve lived this long.”
“One day too many, I think.”
Mygar clashed his sword against the wall. “Shut up you imbeciles and listen. Help us out and I’ll show mercy. If not my men will come and kill you all—even you, milady, for my patience is not inexhaustible.”
Risgan looked down at him coldly. “Let them cool their heels in that crypt. Might teach them some lessons in cruelty.”
Mygar bellowed, “You’ll pay, you filthy outlander. I’m going to tear you limb from limb with my bare hands, even if I have to rip every stone from this damn dungeon.” He leapt, purchasing for handholds, but only slipped back.
Jurna gave his head a sad shake. Moeze studied the three prisoners with a philosopher’s curiosity, as if wondering how such an intricate predicament could have been orchestrated. Risgan pondered no less the intricacies of fate.
They made their way to the entrance, only to find it blocked, as Risgan guessed, by a massive slab of stone jammed tight to the edges with no chance of moving it or squeezing around the sides. It was in the shape of a unicorn goddess, fallen headfirst from on high. The horn had pierced into the flagstones, effectively pinning it in place.
Risgan looked left and right. “Where is the unicorn?”
The men stared at each other dully. “We’ve not seen it.”
“But you saw it come in earlier, did you not, luring Arcadia into this dank place?”
No one had an answer. Arcadia just looked away with a puzzled frown.
They passed the wounded m
are, snorting and thrashing on the cold stone and Arcadia knelt to console Spinifex until she could bear it no longer. On a heart-choked nod to Jurna, she looked away as Jurna ran it through, putting it out of its misery. The young huntress clasped hands to mouth and wept.
* * *
A solemn mood fell over the companions. Hating to see the huntress cry, Risgan inclined his head in the direction of the back of the temple. “Spread out,” he whispered. “Hape, you take Moeze down that way and see if you can find an alternate exit. I’ll console her.” He turned back to the others. “Jurna, Arcadia, let’s go this way.”
He put a hand gently on her shoulder and guided her away from her dead horse. “Milady.”
She wiped away a tear and snuffled, brightening as she pulled back the vines that covered the broken pillars and stared entranced at the rows of script carved there. “Look, there’s more writings on these walls.”
Risgan frowned.
Shattered tablets lay in a pile at the foot of a small shrine flanked with marble unicorns on their hind legs.
“This is the craft of the old gods,” Arcadia murmured. “Driadis and Argonos whom we used to worship until the warrior druids came and infected our tribe and forced us to worship their gods.”
Rows of animals were inscribed on the ancient walls, at one time dyed with pigments of various colours: unicorn, deer, fox, bear, wolf, raven, stags—all in communion with the goddess in the wilds.
“That old script conveys the lore of the animals—the unicorn, wise and compassionate, the bear strong and true, the wolf sly and mysterious. All are sacred to the forest and play their part in the overall scheme. To kill them, especially the unicorn, is a sacrilege.”
“What of wolf furs and the leather that you wear?” jibed Kahel.
“Maybe the wolves should shear men of their hides for use as rugs for their cave dens, I think.”
“It’s an interesting concept,” mused Risgan.
“Look…on these tablets are written the teachings of Driadis the Great.”
