The Dwarf Kingdoms (Book 5) (6 page)

“We will not be safe for long if there are other patrols,” observed Elerian in a troubled voice. “We have one more day before we reach Galenus, more than enough time for them to discover us.”

“You cannot find and destroy them all,” replied Ascilius warningly. “We will have to trust to luck to see us through to the castella.”

“We will not need luck if I can discover is a way to make the Goblins leave these hills,” said Elerian thoughtfully. A smile slowly quirked his lips as a solution came to him. “I am going to retrieve my knives from the forest,” he said to Ascilius, disappearing into the trees before the Dwarf could object.

Grumbling quietly to himself over Elerian’s recklessness, Ascilius wrapped Bolanus carefully in his cloak and carried him to the middle of the forest road before covering him with rocks from a nearby streambed.

“Those who follow us will pick up his body and bring it to Galenus,” he thought to himself as he completed his task. “If fortune favors us, he will be laid to rest properly in Galenus.”

After making the rounds of the sentries and warning them to be doubly cautious, Ascilius returned to the head of the column of Dwarves sleeping on the road. Dawn was still hours away so he sat down, drawing his cloak closely around him to ward off the night air.

“Where is that dratted Elf?” he wondered to himself, his eyes growing heavier by the moment. Concern for Elerian kept him awake as a slow, tortuous hour passed with no sign of his companion. Then, gradually, Ascilius’s bearded chin slumped down onto his broad chest, and he slipped into an exhausted slumber.

After leaving Ascilius behind, Elerian climbed high into a huge oak tree. Standing at ease on one of its massive limbs, he extended his right hand and cast a shape-changing spell, watching with his third eye as a flow of golden light spilled from his fingertips, covering his body from head to toe. His body shifted, changed, and shrank, taking on the feathered form of a great gray forest owl. He would have preferred his familiar hawk form, but the large, round eyes of his owl shape saw better at night, perceiving the black and white world around him as clearly as if the sun was high in the sky. Leaping into the air, Elerian rose through the branches above him on silent wings. Flying west over the foothills he opened his third eye, looking for the telltale red of Goblin shades. All too soon he found another patrol traveling north into the hills toward Ascilius’s hidden road. In the distance beyond them, he saw other shades glimmering redly in the trees.

“There are too many of the enemy  abroad in the forest tonight,” thought Elerian anxiously to himself as he cupped his wings and drifted down through the canopy to the forest floor a little distance ahead of the Goblin patrol. “Ascilius’s company has no chance of remaining undiscovered if my plan fails.”

Changing back to his own shape, he veiled himself in the illusion he had selected for his night’s work. Stepping behind an enormous oak tree, as wide as three tall men, he waited for the Goblins to approach. Soon he heard their faint, almost imperceptible footsteps. Peering around the trunk of the tree which concealed him, Elerian saw several Mordi approaching, moving like shadows through the wood. Clearly, they did not expect to discover anything in the forest tonight, for their pale faces looked both bored and unhappy, reflecting their discontent with the task assigned to them. Smiling in anticipation, Elerian suddenly leaped out from behind the tree, exposing himself to the view of the startled Wood Goblins who froze in their tracks. Their eyes grew wide and round with fear, showing white rings around their dark irises, for before them, they saw a red dragon which Elerian had modeled after Eboria’s dragonet.

Elerian roared, the sound amplified by the illusion, until the tree leaves overhead trembled. The fanged mouth of his illusory form suddenly gaped open, and red flames spouted out causing all of the Mordi to throw themselves flat on the ground. Extending his right hand, Elerian watched with his magical eye as a golden orb of light flew from his fingertips, coming to rest in the air about six feet above the prone Goblins before bursting into red flames. Elerian let the Goblins feel the scorching heat of the mage fire for a long moment before extinguishing it.

As Elerian’s illusion closed its fiery mouth, the Mordi leapt to their feet. Casting aside their weapons, they spun around and ran for the cover of the trees in front of them, fear and panic lending wings to their flying feet. For a second time, Elerian extend his right hand, and a second orb shot from his fingers, striking the seat of the nearest Mordi’s leather pants. The spell was weak, barely raising a flame and a puff of smoke, for Elerian wished to only to frighten the Goblin not kill him. Feeling an intense heat on his posterior, the Mordi released a blood-curdling scream from his throat which froze the blood of his fleeing comrades. Certain he was about to be roasted alive, he bounded past his two companions, skimming over and around every obstacle in his path in a way that was wonderful to watch, wisps of smoke still trailing from his breeches. Regretfully Elerian stood and watched as the Wood Goblins vanished into the forest. It pained him to remain where he was, for in other circumstances, he would have chased the Mordi all the way back to Galenus, reveling in their screams and pale frightened faces.

“There is no time for sport tonight, for I must still deal with the other patrols,” thought Elerian to himself as he changed back into an owl. Still disguised by his dragon illusion, he leapt into the air. Flapping his powerful wings, he rose effortlessly above the treetops. When he was high in the sky, he roared again, spouting illusory flames that he hoped would be visible all the way to Galenus. From the forest below, he heard shouting and the harsh braying of Goblin horns. In the distance, more horns took up the refrain. With his magical third eye, Elerian saw flickers of red through gaps in the leafy canopy below him, all of them swiftly retreating north toward Galenus or west toward the Catalus.

“In a few hours, there will not be a single Goblin stirring in the forest east of the river,” thought Elerian cheerfully to himself as he cupped his wings and dropped back down to the forest floor. Resuming his own shape, he returned to where he had cached his knives, smiling grimly every now and then over the fright that he had given the Mordi. Returning to the hidden road, he slipped past the sentries and lay down to rest near Ascilius who now lay on his side, deep in slumber. Drawing his cloak around him, Elerian slipped into the half sleep of the Elves, certain that nothing would disturb the Dwarf company for the remainder of the night.

THE STABLES

Before the sun’s first light broke over the horizon, Elerian awoke, as refreshed as if he had rested for the entire night instead of just a few hours. Like a forest creature rising from its bed, he rose lithely to a sitting position, untroubled by any aches or stiffness despite having lain on the ground wrapped only in his cloak.

Several feet to his left, Ascilius still slept, wrapped tightly in his cloak which was dotted with crystal clear beads of water from the white mist that hung low over the ground. Farther down the road, the rest of the Dwarf Company also slept, but on either side of the forest track, Elerian could see motionless sentries, standing in the fog like shadows as they kept watch over the forest.

Ignoring the morning chill, which he felt only a little, Elerian took a biscuit from his pack, nibbling on it quietly and washing down the rock hard bites with a little water from his water bottle as he patiently waited for Ascilius to awaken. Around him the forest slowly came alive as songbirds began to greet the dawn with sweet, liquid voices.

Beside him, Ascilius suddenly stirred and groaned softly, like one who dreams of unpleasant things. Abruptly throwing back his cloak, he sat up, rubbing the sleep from his eyes with both hands. Fully awake at last, he regarded Elerian with dark, somber eyes.

“I cannot see what attraction the forest holds for you,” he said grumpily. “It is damp and cold and there never seems to be a comfortable place to sleep.”

Elerian smiled. “You sang a different tune in the Broken Lands. Have you forgotten the camps we had there? There were warm fires, lights in the trees, and hot food with dry, soft beds to lie in when sleep called?”

“Those camps were few and far between as I recall,” said Ascilius crossly.

“Our discomfort then, as now, was and is dictated by necessity,” observed Elerian sagely. “If these were peaceful times, things would be different.” 

“Then I hope that we will both live to see such days again,” said Ascilius, but his voice did not hold any great optimism. Reaching for his water bottle, which was filled with red wine, he took a great draught. The strong drink immediately brought back a sparkle to his eyes. “We must move quickly today, Elerian, for the wagons are already on their way behind us,” he said in a determined voice. “I only hope that we can evade the other Goblin patrols which we may find in our way.”

“The Goblins are thinking of dragons at the moment not Dwarves,” said Elerian lightly. “At least for today, I think we will find the way unguarded all the way to Galenus.” With a gleam of mischief in his gray eyes, Elerian related his night’s adventures to Ascilius.

“For once your foolishness has served a purpose,” said Ascilius grudgingly when Elerian concluded his tale. “Hopefully the Goblins will think that the patrol you and I slew was eaten by the red dragon.”

“I think it more than likely,” said Elerian cheerfully as he recalled the frightened faces of the Mordi that he had terrified with his dragon illusion. The tale of their narrow escape had no doubt already spread through the Goblin ranks. “Just to be on the safe side, however, I will scout out the road ahead of us,” said Elerian rising gracefully to his feet.

“Be careful,” warned Ascilius. “I cannot be there to rescue you every time you get yourself into trouble.” The Dwarf’s tone was light, but there was concern in his eyes, for Elerian had come uncomfortably close to dying in the lupin’s jaws the night before.

“I will be there for the assault on the fortress, never fear,” Elerian assured Ascilius cheerfully. After taking up his pack and other gear, he ran silently down the road, disappearing quickly between the great trees growing on either side of it.

“I hope he stays out of trouble this time,” thought Ascilius dourly to himself as he turned away to rouse his sleeping company. “He is a thorn in my side much of the time, but I would miss him terribly if he met an untimely death.” 

Unfazed by either his close brush with death the night before or Ascilius’s concern, Elerian ran down the forest road, barely feeling the ground under his feet as he concentrated all of his senses on the forest around him, trying to ferret out any hidden dangers. He paid particular attention to the branches and leaves that formed a living roof overhead, on the watch for any suspicious looking creatures, but today the canopy was empty except for the small birds which normally resided in its branches.

By early evening, Elerian’s effortless stride brought him without incident to the lip of a gorge that ran north to south. Several hundred feet below him, the green waters of the Catalus emitted a muted roar as they rushed between stony banks, running south toward the scorched and withered valley that lay between Galenus and Ennodius. Perhaps another ten miles to the west, Elerian saw the steep slopes of Celsus, the mountain that housed Galenus, rising high above the forest.

“It is not far now to the castella,” thought Elerian to himself as he followed the hidden road down the steep, tree covered eastern side of the canyon. He was not surprised to see that it ended on the stony east bank of the Catalus before a span of glass smooth green water that reached from one side of the river to the other.

“I will wait here for Ascilius,” Elerian thought to himself as he examined the sheet of water that ran smoothly past his feet. He knew that the road continued on under its deceptively placid surface, but he felt no inclination to brave the strong current and icy cold waters of the river.

“I will leave the wading to the Dwarves,” he thought to himself with a gleam of amusement in his gray eyes. “There is no sense in wetting my feet when I can cross the river in comfort on Ascilius’s rope.”

At that moment, barely two paces to Elerian’s right, a large otter emerged from the river, rivulets of clear water streaming from its brown fur and a small, silvery trout struggling between its sharp teeth. Ignoring Elerian, the otter began to consume its meal on the margin of the hidden road, nosily crunching through scales and bones.

“This fellow is unusually brave and curious,” thought Elerian, noticing that the otter was watching him out of the corners of its soft brown eyes. “Is he more than he seems, I wonder?”

Opening his third eye, Elerian beheld his own golden shade and the smaller one of the otter. Extending a portion of his shade shaped like a golden thread from his right hand, he delicately touched the end of it to the left shoulder of the otter’s shade. As if stung by that ethereal touch, the otter leaped back. Abandoning its meal, it dove effortlessly into the river, disappearing beneath the green tinted waters of the Catalus. Thoughtfully, Elerian closed his third eye and studied the placid surface of the river. At the brief moment of contact between his shade that of the otter, he had felt a brief resonance, as if he had encountered something similar to himself. He had sensed thoughts, too, that never belonged to any animal.

“The creature was a shape changer as I suspected, but he did not belong to any race that I am familiar with,” thought Elerian to himself. A sense of frustration swept through him, for he felt as if he was on the verge of some discovery that might shed light on his own past. “Anthea did say that there was a part of me that was neither Elf nor human,” he reminded himself. “Is it possible that I have some connection with the creature that I just saw?” he wondered to himself.

Maintaining his position on the road where he remained hidden behind its illusion spell, Elerian kept a close watch on the river, looking both upstream and downstream, but the otter never surfaced again. He was finally forced to abandon his scrutiny of the swift flowing water when Ascilius and his company of Dwarves appeared behind him.

“I will have my answer some day, if I have to hunt through every stream in the Middle Realm to find another of these shape changers,” Elerian assured himself as he watched Ascilius rig his rope across the river. Using the line as before to keep from being washed away, the company forded the river a second time. Under the envious eyes of the Dwarves, many of whom were wet to the waist by the cold waters of the Catalus, Elerian crossed last, running lightly, with all the grace and agility of an acrobat, across the taut cord spanning the river.

“Look for me at the road’s end,” said Elerian to Ascilius as the Dwarf coiled his wet rope. Leaving the company of Dwarves in the cool depths of the gorge, he ran ahead again, traveling through miles of empty forest until the road ended abruptly before him in front of a sheer face of gray rock covered with green moss and gray lichens. A diminutive, clear rivulet trickled down the center of the cliff, splashing into a small, shallow pool at its base. The overflow from the pool, a crystal clear steam barely a foot wide, disappeared into the wood to the right of the road. The forest grew right up to the face of the cliff, the thick green roof formed by the leaves and branches of the great trees around him preventing Elerian from determining how high the vertical face of stone was or what lay above it.

“There must be a door here,” thought Elerian to himself, but even his sharp eyes could not find any hint of where it might be. Tiring of his fruitless search, he was about to sit down when a soft voice whispered in his head, “The pool to your right is suitable for aqua vitae.” Instantly, upon hearing the voice of Dymiter, Elerian looked around him, but he saw no sign of the mage’s shade nor did he hear his voice again.

“At least I know that he is still alive,” thought Elerian to himself. Because of Dymiter’s long silence, he had feared that Elven mage had diminished his limited life force to the point where he had finally faded and left this plane of existence.

Deciding to take Dymiter’s advice, Elerian emptied his water bottle, filling it again with cold, crystal clear water from the pool. After casting the difficult spell Dymiter had given him for aqua vitae, Elerian watched with his third eye as a cloak of golden light flowed from his right hand, briefly covering the leather water bottle. Removing the stopper from its neck, he saw that it now contained a clear liquid that seemed to shine with its own dim light in the dark depths of the container.

“Did Dymiter forsee some use for this potent brew or did he merely advise me out of caution?” wondered Elerian to himself as he stoppered the bottle before sitting down on the road with his back against the cold stone of the cliff to wait for Ascilius.

“This may be my last sight in this life of green, growing trees,” he thought to himself with uncharacteristic gloom, as if the gray color of the cliff behind him had seeped into his thoughts, darkening his mood. “Who knows what bloody scenes of strife the passageway behind me will lead to and whether I will survive them?”

“Either you will or you won’t,” whispered back his common sense. “It is out of your hands so think about something else.”

“Good advice,” thought Elerian to himself wryly. Turning his thoughts to Anthea instead of his uncertain future, his mind became lost in waking dreams while his body sat still and silent as the trees that surrounded him, patiently keeping watch.

The sun was sinking below the western horizon and twilight was creeping over the forest when Ascilius and his small company suddenly appeared on the road in front of Elerian. All of the Dwarves looked tired, for the more than sixty miles they had covered in the last two days wearing full battle gear had taken its toll on them.

“I have seen no sign of any Goblins of any of their spies,” said Elerian to Ascilius after springing lithely to his feet.

“There are Goblins nearby even if we cannot see them,” said Ascilius wearily to Elerian. “Behind this stone face, a steep hill rears up its stony slopes. The castella of Galenus lies inside of it and there are battlements on its summit. Only the concealment spell on the road we stand on and the thick cover of leaves overhead prevent the sentries in the fortress from spying us from the heights and sounding the alarm. We had best get inside as soon as possible.”

Walking up to the rock wall behind Elerian, Ascilius spoke a word of command. A thin line of silvery argentum immediately appeared in the cliff face in front of him, revealing a hidden entrance. Two doors closed off the opening, each one five feet wide and ten feet high. When Ascilius spoke again, they swung outward slowly on silent hinges revealing a dark passageway with rough-hewn walls and a level floor. Ascilius entered the tunnel at once, his quick stride betraying his impatience to have solid stone over his head once more. Elerian followed the Dwarf reluctantly.

“Once more I must go underground where I would rather not be,” he thought gloomily to himself. Behind him, he heard the soft tramp of booted feet as the column of Dwarves filed into the tunnel behind him. When the last one entered the passageway, the stone doors swung shut of their own accord. The muffled thud they made sounded both final and ominous to Elerian’s ears.

Ascilius now lit a single, small mage light which centered itself just above his head. It followed him down the tunnel, acting as a guide and providing illumination for the Dwarves following him. Elerian, walking on Ascilius’s right side, saw as well by its faint light as if he walked in full sunlight, but there was nothing to look at in the monotonous tunnel save the rough walls. The passageway sloped gradually downward, ending before another blank wall after about a quarter mile.

Turning to the Dwarves closest behind him, Ascilius said quietly, “We will wait here until midnight. Rest quietly while you can, for when I open the hidden doors in this wall, we will begin our assault on the castella.”

After Ascilius's words were passed down the line, the whole company immediately cast itself onto the stone floor of the tunnel to eat and rest. Elerian sat with Ascilius a little apart from the nearest Dwarves, both of them resting their backs against the blank wall which ended the passageway.