by D. H. Dunn
“Carver?” Upala stood, walking over to join them. Merin alone stayed by the former doorway of the antechamber, which once led to the summit plain of Varesta but was now a featureless wall. “My research has never indicated any creature or device with that name.”
“I am sure it was there in the writings about the Hero, if you chose to see it,” Kater said, rolling his eyes at his sister. “More likely you passed over any scroll or parchment that did not contain a link to Sirapothi, your path to run and flee. The study of the Hero is the study of our history and how to defend--”
“Please!” Merin yelled. “Not all of us in this room can live forever. Just get to the heart of the matter. What is a carver, and does one being here help us?”
“Such impatience.” Kater shook his head. “It is no wonder you needed me. To wit, the carvers were just as they are named. I would guess they are the means by which the great Hero must have hollowed out these vast chambers and passages. Perhaps something found from another world, or his own creation. An automaton, mindless save for whatever instructions the Hero had given it. What is surprising to me is that it would be here.”
“Why does that surprise you?” Drew asked.
“Because I did not think the Hero knew of them. All my research indicates they were found on our world, on Aroha Darad.” He shook his head again. “It was a good choice for you to run, Adley. The acid from the carver would likely have been quite harmful to your young friend here, if not to you as well. Nevertheless, a dead end. We are no closer than we were.”
Drew frowned. There was an itch in the back of his mind that wouldn’t let go. Something about this whole situation. The Hero, the Dragons, the temple. Something didn’t add up.
“We need to keep searching.” Upala said. “We need to find an answer soon. Nima and Merin will run out of food, and I do not know how long the milkfruit Tanira left will--”
“Excuse me,” Drew said, interrupting. ”But something doesn’t make any sense to me.”
“By all means,” Kater said with a laugh. “Let us take as much time as we need to help Adley understand. I myself am in no danger of starving so--”
“Be quiet, Kater,” Drew said. “I need you most of all to shut up because you’re the one with the answers here. So take a moment and just… listen.”
Drew paced, his thoughts organizing as his feet moved across the stone. It wasn’t the same as a ship rocking in the waves, but it was enough to calm him and help him get his thoughts sorted.
“The timeline as I understand it is this: your Manad Vhan Hero, Orami Feram decides enough is enough and it is time to take out the Dragons. Now, he can’t kill them-”
“Not completely true,” Kater interrupted. “Unlike Manad Vhan, the Dragons possess no healing. Save for Terminus, but he is unique.”
“Fine. For whatever reason, he didn’t kill them. He trapped them, one at a time, on mountain temples all over your world.”
“All of that is correct Drew,” Upala said. ”The Dragons were sealed in vaults on Aroha Darad. The Hero then travelled here, to Sirapothi, in order to eliminate future Dragons at the source. By disabling their creator.”
“Sessgrenimath,” Nima said. “Tanira had to free him in order to get something that would open this temple. I spoke to him and-”
“You spoke to Sessgrenimath?” Kater’s expression was a mixture of jealousy and horror. Drew could only imagine how envious the old Manad Vhan must be of Nima.
“Yes, she did,” Drew continued. “So Orami Feram deals with the Dragons on your world, deals with Sessgrenimath here and then builds this temple here to keep his armor and weapons safe, I guess. He then sets the door of the temple so that only he, or someone wearing his armor like Tanira, can pass through it. Which is why we are all trapped. Then he vanishes, dies, whatever. All your lore says he never returned, right?”
“An oversimplified summary, but factually accurate.” Kater let out an enormous sigh. “Now I find myself quoting you, Adley. What is your point?”
“My point, Kater, is this. If the Hero did all of these things and then disappeared. . . How the hell do you know about any of this?”
Both Kater and Upala looked back at Drew, the expressions on their faces nearly identical. He could see hints of confusion, frustration and even outrage in their eyes. He couldn’t blame them. He realized he was challenging something they had believed in for an unthinkable amount of time.
“That is a good point,” Merin said, rubbing her chin. “All the scrolls and materials the Rakhum have been digging up, all this time. Who wrote them?”
“Yeah,” Nima said. “You said they all talk about the ‘Great Hero,’ why would this guy call himself the ‘Great Hero’? Who would do that, besides Kater of course?”
Kater shot Nima a glare, Nima simply smiling back in reply.
“Foolish girl. Other Manad Vhan wrote them of course,” Kater said. “Upala and I deduced they must have left the region before our parents arrived but-”
“Deduced meaning assumed,” Drew cut in. “It’s all right Kater, the two of you haven’t had fresh eyes on this for. . . well I don’t want to get into how long.”
“We did think of this, Drew,” Upala said, a hint of defensiveness in her voice.
Even without the rasi sakta to cloud his reactions, he still felt bad that he was making her feel less competent.
“A psychic link, that was our theory. Back when Kater and I used to discuss this together.” She shot her brother a pained look, which Kater seemed to do his best not to react to.
“Accept this as an alternate possibility. Orami Feram did not act alone, and maybe he stayed here when his tasks were done. He stayed here, but someone else left, and left via some other means.”
Nima jumped up, clapping her hands.
“He didn’t act alone! I know he didn’t! I didn’t understand what it meant then, but I do now.”
“What are you talking about?” Kater scowled at Nima.
“Sessgrenimath! When we talked to him, he called you people ‘scuttlers.’ He talked about when the ‘scuttlers’ had trapped him. He said ‘the pair.’ There was so much to think of then, but now I remember. He said the pair trapped him!”
Drew snapped his fingers, grinning as he pointed at Nima.
“There, you see?”
“Someone was with Orami Feram?” Upala asked with a frown. “Then why is there no mention of this person? In all the deeds and actions, where is the other name?”
“Perhaps you have had it all along?” Merin said. “What if all you have studied was not performed by Orami Feram, but Orami and Feram? Two Manad Vhan?”
Upala and Kater were now frozen, but their expressions were no longer mirrors of each other. Kater still wore a sneer, a defiance that showed the certainty of his belief. Upala had a slight grin on her face as she looked at Drew, a spark in her eye.
Drew pointed back to the darkened hallway, where a hundred passages awaited. An hour ago, he had no idea which of those might lead to their escape, if any of them. Now, things were different.
“So if Orami stayed here and Feram returned to Aroha Darad, there must be another portal here in the temple somewhere. Maybe that’s what your carvers are doing, Kater. They’re not carving. I think they are guarding the portal. Our way out!”
5
Upala watched the reactions of the others in the room at Drew’s pronouncement. Her own heart had leapt at the prospect of an escape, her desire to get back to Aroha Darad and stop Tanira outpacing any shame she might have felt over not figuring out the puzzle of the Hero’s dual identity.
Nima’s face was beaming with pride as she looked up at Drew, her faith in her friend seemingly as eternal as the mountain they were trapped inside.
Leaning against the doorway, Merin looked back and forth between the group and the shadows that led deeper into the temple, one foot literally out of the room as she seemed to gauge how long she would wait for the rest of their decision.
Kater sc
owled back at Drew, the expression on her brother’s face one she knew well. She could tell he had already worked it out in his mind and accepted Drew’s theory as plausible, but admitting and accepting it would be another matter.
Her heart fell as she watched the same reactions from Kater she had been seeing for centuries. Merin had given him a second chance at life, at making things better. Yet here he was, walking down the same road as always.
“So, we are just going to assume Adley is correct?” he said, his voice rasping with irritation. “I can see in your eyes your acceptance. Am I the only one here who retains his faculties?”
“You’re one of the people who won’t starve soon,” Nima said, glaring at Kater as she held the small Caenolan child.
Merin took a step back into the room.
“Nima is correct. Neither she, the child nor I have the luxury of waiting. This theory is a chance, an opportunity. We are going to take it.”
“Look people,” Drew said as he put his hands up, stepping between Kater and Merin. “I could well be wrong, but we’re not going to prove it sitting around here. Let’s split up and see what supplies we can find, that should be our first priority.”
“A sound decision,” Merin said, heading towards the door.
“I’ll go with Merin!” Nima shouted, giving Drew a wink as she ran to catch up with the Rakhum woman, who had already passed beyond the doorway and into the hall.
“Be careful,” Drew shouted after them. “Meet back here … um. Shortly.” His words echoed into the hallway.
“Precise as always, Adley.” Kater turned away from them, surprising Upala by heading for the hallway himself. She had expected him to stay here and argue his case. “This changes nothing. But I could do with different scenery, so I might clear my thoughts and plan our next decision.”
“Yeah, you do that.” Drew said, glaring at Kater as he too passed into the shadows. Upala sighed, the sound filling the room with her disappointment in her brother.
Yet now, she and Drew were alone. Which presented an opportunity to address something that had been on her mind since they had first stepped out of the portal and onto Sirapothi.
Upala stepped closer to Drew, taking his hands into her own and smiling.
“In sending the others away, Perhaps you had other intentions?”
His cheeks blushed as he smiled. It was an amusing affectation, that he would be embarrassed. It was also a good sign.
“You mean besides annoying your brother?” He laughed, gently pulling her closer, his hands now encircling her waist. “Yes I did. I wanted to see… where we stood.”
“We seem to be standing quite close,” she said with a smirk. She looked up at him, the green of his eyes like an open field. “Yet I too wish to know the truth of things. The rasi sakta, do you still feel it?”
He leaned in, pressing his lips against hers. Upala closed her eyes as she put her arms around his neck, focusing all her energy on the kiss. The warmth, the softness of it. Feelings of desire and contentment mixed within her, swirling inside her like a pleasant vortex.
But there was nothing unnatural, as there had been before. No forceful drive inside her, pushing her towards him with magical force as if she were drawn to him by gravity instead of her own emotions.
She felt merely her own desires, her own honest wants. They were deep and profound, but they were hers alone.
She pulled away only slightly, creating just a tiny space between them as she opened her eyes and stared into his.
“That was all me,” Drew said, his eyes crinkling with his smile. “I promise. I’m guessing it was the same for you?”
She nodded.
“Not a trace of rasi sakta,” she said, kissing him again. “I cannot explain it, but I have had no sense of it since arriving in Sirapothi.”
“Let’s take our victories where we can get them,” Drew said with a laugh. He took a step back, taking her hands in his own. “I’m glad our feelings are our own again. Were you worried? That this wasn’t how I felt about you?”
“I suppose.” Upala felt a bit of warmth coming to her cheeks. “I am unfamiliar with these feelings in myself. How could I judge them in another? So, yes. I worried.”
“Me too,” he said with a smile. “Maybe together, when this is over, we can get to a place where neither of us worry anymore.”
A place with no worry. Her mind struggled to accept that such a concept might even be possible. Her earliest memories were of claws and blood, of screaming and death. Since then, it had been centuries of pursuit, her mind trying to keep her future one step ahead of the Dragons.
Always alone.
But a world without Dragons, and one where she walked a path with another along side her? What would that mean for her? What would her purpose be, when her heart could decide it instead of her fear?
As if in response to her thoughts, a bell sounded inside her senses. It was a tiny vibration, a chime so soft and distant she might not have noticed it, had she not been yearning for her home, seen in a new light of possibility.
She focused on the sound, a magical sensation that existed somewhere inside her mind, some part of her that had become attuned to the faint resonance of the doorways between worlds.
With a gasp, she reached out and clutched Drew’s hand, squeezing with her excitement. She could feel the swirling energies some distance beneath them, somewhere inside this mountain. Waiting for her.
“What?” Drew gasped, started at her reaction. She watched his eyes study her face, shifting from worry to excitement as he read the joy in her expression.
He understood what she had sensed, the only thing in this desolate place that could bring them hope.
There was a portal here.
Nima kept her hands tight on the stone rungs of the wide ladder that had been carved into the side of a deep chasm, the light from Lhamu’s head illuminating the way clearly. The child was tightly bound over her shoulders, sleeping again after feeding from the milkfruit she had found in the sack Tanira had left. Now there was only one of the strange Caenolan plants left. She wondered how Tanira had planned to feed Lhamu once the fruit had run out.
If this route didn’t lead to somewhere with a way to feed Lhamu, Nima would have the same problem. One of many problems she had no idea how she would solve.
Upala climbed alongside her, the woman having sensed a portal down the passage Kater had led them through. That path had ended in a long, deep crack in the mountain where the stone ladder had been carved, descending into the shadows.
Nima had first met Drew climbing in a similar crack, though that one was made of ice. She never could have guessed all the things that chance moment would lead her to.
Now Drew seemed to have gained access to magic, the same type of magic as Upala and Kater.
It was hard to imagine that he was the same man she helped escape a crevasse back in the Khumbu Icefall, but it was hard to accept she had once been in the Icefall as well.
So much had happened since then, so much had changed. Everest and Nepal were truly worlds away, but somehow they seemed even farther.
Yet there were things there she had left undone, strings that pulled across the portals at her. Even if she felt no yearning to see her homeland again, her brother was still there. Her father was still there.
And even with Jang gone, they still needed her help. Wanda’s words came back to her, whispered underneath a wall of glowing portals in the cold, distant Under.
“When is it about what you want, Nima?”
She wasn’t sure what she wanted, not after Val. But not feeling the weight of her responsibilities back home would be a good start.
Yet for now, none of that mattered anyway. All that mattered was a long descent, the tiny child strapped to her back and a portal they hoped was there.
They had no ropes, no equipment, nothing to aid in the descent. They also had no time, and no choice. There had been little debate. Nima and Upala had decided to take the lead going down
the ladder, Lhamu being the best source of light and Nima being unwilling to let someone else carry her.
“Can’t your people ever put one of these portals in an easy-to-reach place?” Nima asked, lowering her feet to the next rung. The climb was not challenging, or would not have been had she not been so tired, so fatigued both in body and heart.
“That is not how it works,” Upala said. “The portals between worlds are simply there. They exist wherever they do, as part of nature.”
Nima grunted her acknowledgment. She continued to view the portals as magical and mysterious doorways, and liked the idea that gods put more of them there than people like Kater and Upala. Even if Merin’s people seemed to consider the Manad Vhan gods at times, to Nima they were just people who could do things she couldn’t.
“I must admit,” Upala’s voice came from above, her words taking on a melancholy tone. “The irony here is challenging, Nima. For days you have been wandering through a world that to me has been a legend, a dream. By the Hero, you have gazed upon the very form of Sessgrenimath.
“He just looked like big, glowing eyes,” Nima said. “You didn’t miss much.”
It was much scarier than Nima allowed her voice to show. She felt a chill run down her neck thinking of the massive presence all the same, but she did not want Upala to feel bad. Besides, it had been dark, and they really only did see the eyes.
“It is hard for me to explain, Nima. I have been dreaming of seeing this world my whole life. Now I am lost and blind inside the Hero’s temple, looking for a way to leave the only place I have ever wanted to go.”
“You sensed the portal, right?” Worry began to creep into the shadows as they descended the ladder. “So, we’re not lost.”
“I sense the direction,” Upala said. “I do not know the route. If only we had a map of this place.”
“I thought you had been excavating ruins and temples for centuries?” Nima recalled Merin mentioning it to her when they were in the Under. Both Upala and Kater had used Merin’s people to dig up old relics and scrolls, apparently for centuries. “Didn’t you find any maps of the Hero’s temple?”
