Барб Хенди - Of Truth and Beasts

Wynn’s light only showed perhaps forty or fifty paces either way. The wall had certainly been broken by pressure when the mountain fell. She stepped into the raw tunnel, its floor as rough as the walls, and looked back as Ore-Locks followed.

Shade stood beyond the opening with her ears flattened and jowls twitching, and Chane glowered, his eyes narrow.

“Are you coming?” Wynn asked.

To Chane’s dismay, the tunnel behind the breach went on and on, deeper into the mountain. Each time he thought Wynn’s perilous mission was finished, it began all over again. Worse, this tunnel was nothing like the ones above.

Roughly hewn, it had been gouged out in a rush, rather than skillfully excavated. Had someone been left alive after the seatt’s fall? If so, why dig here, farther into the mountain’s depths? Even more puzzling, the tunnel was surprisingly wide and without any supports, but the ceiling appeared sound. Chane could have driven a horse and wagon down this passage.

Ore-Locks still led them. Although his manic drive had resurfaced, he appeared less certain of his way, advancing more slowly. Wynn stayed right behind him, her breaths coming too quickly. When she looked back, her lips were parched.

“Drink,” Chane said, pulling the water skin off his shoulder.

She took a long swallow and tapped Ore-Locks’s shoulder. When he turned, she handed him the water skin. Once he’d finished, she dropped to her knees, set down her staff, and poured water into her hand.

“Here, Shade.”

As the dog lapped, Chane noticed even deeper gouges in the wall. He took a few steps past Ore-Locks.

“Look here,” he said.

Wynn joined him, holding out her crystal near the tunnel’s wall. In some places, three gouges ran parallel, each one so deep they made no sense. Multiple strikes along the same lines would have been necessary to cut paths so deep, but to what purpose? He remembered the blackened wall in one tunnel far above, and the human corpses.

“I do not like this,” he said.

“I know,” Wynn whispered.

He knew nothing would stop her but another end to this new route. When she retrieved her staff, Ore-Locks moved on. Within twenty paces, the floor became cluttered with debris, and their progress slowed.

Chane looked ahead over Ore-Locks, trying to see how far the tunnel stretched, and then Wynn gave a small cry. She fell forward on the tunnel floor, and Chane moved quickly to help her, but Shade dodged around him, trying to get to her first.

“I’m all right,” she said. “I just tripped.”

She pushed up onto her knees and reached back, pulling something long and dark out from under her ankle. Dropping it instantly, she scrambled up.

Chane leaned over with his crystal for a closer look. It was a bone, big enough to wield as a club, and so aged that it had blended with the debris.

“Not from a dwarf,” he said. “Thick enough, but far too long.”

Ore-Locks waited ahead, but for the first time since Wynn had entered this rough-hewn passage, her eyes glowed with that old, familiar excitement.

“It’s not human, either,” she said quietly. “When I had access to the ancient texts, I found a mention in one of Volyno’s writings that the enemy’s forces may have tried to come in from beneath the seatt.”

The knot in Chane’s stomach returned. “What mention?”

“It was difficult to make out, and he also wrote ‘of Earth ... beneath the chair of a lord’s song ... meant to prevail but all ended ... halfway eaten beneath.’ ”

“Eaten?”

“Ore-Locks, wait,” Wynn called out. “Shade, come help me.”

Chane was lost for a way to stop her as she dug through the rubble. Shade whined once and sniffed the debris, then huffed, scratching for Wynn to come look.

Puzzled, Ore-Locks came back. “What are you doing?”

“Looking for ... here!” Wynn exclaimed.

She held up a large skull, having to use both hands. Chane took it from her.

Its back half was gone, and it was heavier than expected. When whole, it might have been the size of a mule or horse’s head, but it was not shaped like any equine beast. Neither was it human or dwarven. Huge eye sockets were set wide to the skull’s sides, and the long upper jaw was lined with a few remaining, needlelike teeth.

Chane had never seen anything like it.

“What was it?” Wynn asked.

“I do not know,” Ore-Locks said.

“It must have been part of the enemy’s forces.” Wynn’s excitement grew again. “That means it was down here for a reason.

“But did it come before or after the seatt fell?” she ventured, as if talking to herself.

Chane could see her mind working, and did not like it. “Either way, more important is how it died,” he countered.

He looked to those three deep and long gouges in the wall. Shade huffed again, still digging in the debris, and this time Ore-Locks leaned over to grasp what the dog uncovered.

“I know this one,” he said, holding up what was little more than the upper portion of a skull’s face. “ Shlugga ... what you call a goblin.”

Even Chane knew of goblins, having encountered a pack on his journey across the world to find Wynn. She had told him that some sages believed the Ancient Enemy had used these two-legged beasts during the war.

He kept his thoughts to himself. Unlike Wynn, he had never believed any war could have covered the world enough to blot out history. Before the Guild of Sagecraft, history would have always been a fragmented thing, subjected to “revisions” according to the desires of those who preserved it. But the scale of destruction and death here was beyond any territorial conflict exaggerated over ages to mythical proportions.

Multitudes had died here over a short period of time, at a guess. He could not help wondering what had happened. And what of these foreign bones in this deep, raw tunnel? What had made those distinct, deep gouges in the wall, and why?

Chane did not voice any of this to Wynn. Instead, he rose, peered down the dark tunnel ahead, and sighed in resignation. He knew they would simply move on.

Sau’ilahk drifted to the open portal of a hall filled with immense basalt statues like coffins. This chamber appeared to be a dead end, except for the gaping breaches in the end walls, but Wynn was nowhere in sight.

He went to look into the wide left-end breach and found a shaft going up and down. Carefully approaching the hall’s other end, he found that this taller, narrower breach led into a tunnel. A good ways down it to the right, he spotted the faintest flicker of light.

About to slip in, he paused and looked back. Chuillyon and his companions would come soon enough. No doubt Shâodh was tracking Wynn’s group. Sau’ilahk did not want to openly engage all three elves, but neither would he tolerate their interference. It was time to do something about Chuillyon.

But when Sau’ilahk looked down the tunnel, the faint light bobbed and winked. Wynn was moving again. There was no time to feed on Chuillyon here and now. What a disappointment, but perhaps something less personal but still deadly was required.

A simple servitor of Air would not be enough. Fire, in the form of Light, would also be required. It needed to be encased in Earth drawn from Stone, as well. A servitor of multiple Elements, in three conjuries, would cost him dearly. Then a fourth conjury had to intertwine with the others to give his creation the necessary spark of sentience.

He began to conjure Air. When its quivering ball manifested, he caged it with his incorporeal fingers and embedded it with Fire in the form of Light. A yellow-orange glow radiated from within his grip. Forcing his hand to become corporeal, he slammed the servitor down into the hall’s floor stones.