David Dalglish - Dawn of Swords

“The ghosts of the dead murmur here,” Kindren whispered softly, yet down here his voice still carried. “These caverns have been here since time immemorial. The deeper we go, the older the crypts. We’ll soon come on the most ancient of the burial sites, those of the earliest elves, Celestia’s first creations, before the dawn of language. The spirits are restless in these chambers, so far away from the light of their creator, and if you hold your breath and listen, you’ll hear them lamenting their loss.”

Kindren said that last bit with a sly smile on his face. Aullienna knew he was only trying to scare her, but she felt an ethereal chill that had nothing to do with the moisture or coldness of the deeper tunnels.

They stayed silent after that, the only sounds the sloshing of their footsteps over the damp stone floor, the crackle of the torch, and their own repetitive breathing. Aully gazed up at the stone figures and sarcophagi surrounding her, which were much more crudely constructed than those they had passed earlier. The faces were barely recognizable as elven, and the figures’ poses were twisted by the artists’ misunderstanding of body structure. Here there were no jewels or gold, no treasure of any sort save for piles of domestic items-cups, bowls, utensils-all primitive and carved from wood. She thought of Noni’s words when the nursemaid told her of the age of her people. Elves had existed for a little over two thousand years. Aully did the math in her head. Given their average lifespan and slower rate of reproduction, that meant they were in the fifteenth generation, twentieth at most. All considered, elves weren’t all that much older than humans as a species. The thought made her head spin.

“This world is so young,” she whispered. “I’m a babe in a land of babes.”

“What?” asked Kindren.

“Nothing.”

The path continued onward. Kindren had led her in a straight line, bypassing many side chambers. Finally they reached the end of the line, a sparsely filled hollow devoid of any carvings or even caskets. Here the corpses were laid out on the ground side by side, their moldy bones green with fungal growth. The light of Kindren’s torch illuminated a hundred lifeless, empty eye sockets staring at the darkened ceiling.

Aully shuddered in the middle of them all. She knelt down and scooped up a stone from the damp ground. It was glossy and black, polished by time and sediment. She flipped it between her fingers, feeling the stone’s perfect smoothness. She uttered a silent prayer to Celestia, infusing the stone with her words of love, before placing it down as tribute on the breastbone of a small pile of skeletal remains. Kindren remained silent behind her, but she felt his curious gaze. She closed her eyes and tilted her head back.

And then, just barely over the trickle of distant water, she heard the whispers.

“It’s them!” she exclaimed, keeping her voice as low as she could. “They’ve awoken!”

Kindren’s mouth twisted into a half-frown. He stared back at her, one eyebrow raised and his nostrils flaring. Under different circumstances, Aully might have found the expression adorable.

“They?” he asked.

“Listen,” said Aully. She stood and placed a hand on his arm, hoping his touch would help keep her calm. “You can hear them.”

Kindren closed his eyes and held his breath. His pointed ears twitched ever so slightly as he struggled to hear what she did. Eventually his eyes snapped open, and that funny-looking frown reversed.

“That’s not the ghosts,” he said, grinning now. He was careful to keep his voice pitched low. “There are others here with us. They’ve probably been down here the whole time.”

“Really?”

“Yes. I recognize that voice.”

He grabbed her hand and began to pull her along behind him.

“What are you doing?” Aully protested.

“Come on now,” he said, his grin mischievous. “Whoever they are, they scared my betrothed. It only seems fair for us to put a bit of that same fright in them.’

That grin won her over. This was something Brienna would do. And if Brienna would do it, so would she.

They tiptoed through the inner sanctums until they caught sight of a gentle glow emanating from a passage on the right. Kindren led her toward it, snuffing out his torch once they reached the entrance. They passed through the adjacent tunnel cautiously, their footfalls soundless-a remarkable feat given the exhilaration that made Aully’s entire body shiver.

When the chamber opened up before them, they found themselves enshrouded by darkness save for the faintly glowing light at the far end of the hollow. Kindren steered a narrow path through the stacks of caskets, moving slowly, not wanting to spoil their surprise by tripping over some unseen artifact or toppling over a burial mound. Aullienna followed, doing everything she could to not give away Kindren’s game.

The voices grew louder and the light clearer, until Aullienna could plainly make out four male figures standing around a single, elegantly carved sarcophagus. One held a burning torch that illuminated their faces as they spoke. Two of them she identified right away. One was Joseph Crestwell, the human; the other was Conall Sinistel, Neyvar Ruven’s cousin, who had won the fencing competition at the tournament. The other two she vaguely recognized, but judging from how similar to Conall they appeared, with straight hair the color of darkened wheat and slender, haughty facial features, she guessed that they were more relations of the Sinistel family tree.

Aully turned to Kindren and opened her mouth, but her betrothed shushed her with a finger to the lips. “Not yet,” he mouthed, his lips moving darkly.

They inched in closer, and finally Aully could make out the words that were being spoken. The tones all four used were hushed and secretive, and she noticed their hardened expressions, their eyes scanning to and fro as if they were suspicious of who might be about. From the fear in her heart, and Kindren’s tense posture, she knew they no longer had any intention of scaring these four, and she feared the reason why they crept closer by silent agreement, listening, watching.

“Enough, Aeson,” Conall said. “There’s no one there.”

“I thought I heard something,” the elf named Aeson said.

“It’s just your mind playing tricks,” said the other, whose name she didn’t know. “These catacombs have that effect on you.”

“I don’t know, I thought I heard something too,” said Joseph, glancing behind him.

“Ignore it,” demanded Conall, looking annoyed.

“Yes,” said the unknown elf. “Let us get back to business. I don’t like being down here any longer than necessary.”

“Of course you don’t, Iolas,” said Aeson. “Do you have anything to add?”

Iolas jabbed his fists into his hips and glared at the human Crestwell.

“We want assurances,” he said. “Our cousin the Neyvar is not one to follow blindly.”

“What sort of assurances are you looking for?” asked Crestwell.

“The land we’ll receive for our assistance. We want it named now.”

Crestwell shook his head. “I am sorry, friend, but that’s not possible.”

“Why?”

“We don’t know which lands will be livable come the end. What happens if we promised you, say, the hill country around Lake Cor, and yet that area is razed of all living things?”

Conall shook his head. “These details don’t matter. Who cares for the razing of the land? A simple sacred word and a sprinkling of seed is all that’s required to fertilize the soil. We are not slaves to nature as you are.”

Joseph Crestwell cocked his head and eyed the elf with skepticism. “It is not nature that worries me. Your old home…if that is all it would take to heal it, why haven’t you done so?”