The Quest (The Hidden Realm Book 5) (12 page)

“The future is mutable,” he reminded himself. “Despite the scene shown to me by my orb, some or all of us may still leave our bones here in this cavern as did Ascilius’s ancestors, for I have a strong premonition that the creature inhabiting the dark recesses around us is not done with us yet. If it fails to stop us with magic, I think it likely that it will resort to violence again.”

When Ascilius and his companions set off across the chamber, Elerian followed, stepping carefully so as not to disturb the bones of the dead. The silence surrounding the company now seemed doubly deep, for Elerian did not resume his singing. The spell he had woven with his voice had tired him greatly, and he thought it better to conserve his strength now, for his limbs, as well as those of his companions, now grew heavier again as the baleful influence of their hidden enemy’s will made itself felt once more, forcing them to walk with slow, plodding steps.

“Lord, can you not sing again?” asked Triarus shyly of Elerian. “Your voice made our hearts and feet lighter.”

“All magic has its price, Triarus,” replied Elerian in a weary voice. “I must rest for a time to replace the power that I have expended.” Disappointed in his answer, the members of the company trudged on, but they did not go far before Ascilius abruptly stopped and turned to face his companions.

“Can any of you tell which way is west?” he asked worriedly.

“I can no longer tell one direction from another,” replied Cordus fearfully.

“Nor can I,” said Cyricus. “How can a Dwarf be lost underground, Ascilius?” he asked, his voice full of confusion.

“I am not sure, cousins,” replied Ascilius, trying to keep the unease out of his voice lest it alarm the others. He looked toward Elerian who also shook his head no, a grim look on his face. “I fear that the creature which seeks to slow our steps has found a way to muddle and confuse our sense of direction, too,” said Ascilius somberly to his companions. “Close your eyes, all of you. I am going to send up a mage light to see which direction we must travel in.” Shutting his own eyes, Ascilius raised his right hand. A golden sphere, invisible to anyone who did not possess mage sight, shot up the ceiling of the cavern. As it began to blossom into a fist-sized mage light, it vanished as suddenly as it had appeared so that only darkness met the eyes of the company when they opened them again. Twice more Ascilius attempted a light before giving up.

“Try your luck, Elerian,” he said quietly. Elerian raised his right hand, casting the spell that would create a mage light, but he fared no better than Ascilius. His magical light died above his head before it was fairly born.

“It would seem that the creature pursuing us is determined to have us travel in the dark,” he said dourly to Ascilius. “Luckily, we have a signpost to guide us in the bones of the dead. We have only to follow them to find our way out of this chamber.”

“Trust his quick wits to see what the rest of us cannot,” thought Ascilius, instantly upset that he had missed such an obvious solution to their problem. “Let us go on then, he replied, grown confident again despite the obstacles placed in their path by their invisible enemy. Following the white gleam of bones and the dull flash of rusted, dusty armor revealed by his upraised lantern, he resumed walking in what he hoped was the right direction. Gradually, Ascilius sank into a fog of weariness, but he stubbornly continued to place one heavy foot in front of another until Dacien abruptly spoke up behind him, his voice sounding both weary and drawn.

“I must rest a bit, Ascilius. Dwarves must be hardy folk indeed not to feel the weariness that has soaked into my bones.”

“We are all tired, whether we say it or not,” Ascilius replied, his voice equally fatigued. “Let us stop here for a bit to rest and to eat and drink.” In an open space free of the great pointed shafts of stone that grew out of the floor of most of the cavern all but Elerian sank wearily to the ground, facing out into the dark as they sat in a circle in the small pool of yellow light cast by the two lanterns. Elerian was as weary as the rest, but a sense of impending danger kept him on his feet, Acris ready in his right hand. Several times as his companions rested and ate, he saw, with his mage sight, a flicker of motion in the darkness around them.

“If this is a living creature, I should be able to see its shade, not just bits of movement,” thought Elerian perplexedly to himself. “Is there a shade which sheds no light?” he wondered. He had never heard of such a thing, but he could think of nothing else to explain the ability of their enemy to mask itself from the view of his magical eye.

“How much farther do you think we have to go?” Elerian asked Ascilius, his voice carefully neutral, for like the Dwarf, he had no wish to stir up any more trouble between them.

“I cannot tell because of our slow pace,” replied Ascilius wearily. “Walking at our normal pace, we should have reached the end of the passageway already, for it is not above ten miles from one end to the other.”

Ascilius fell silent and soon, in spite of their dangerous situation, he and his companions fell asleep, except for Elerian who resisted the urge to close his eyes lest the creature hounding them attack the company while they all slept. Muted by the deep breathing of his companions, he suddenly heard the faint pad of bare flesh on stone somewhere behind him, causing him to spin around instantly with his sword upraised. As something small and dark sprang at him out of the gloom beyond the lantern light, Elerian brought his sword down on the creature’s head, but it twisted sinuously away and back from the bright blade, so that Acris’s point scored the right side of its chest instead of striking the crown of its head edge on. Again, as steel made contact with the creature’s flesh, Elerian felt a sudden shock which jarred his hand and arm, as if he had struck stone, but the sudden, high-pitched screech of rage that tore asunder the silence of the cavern, assured him that Acris had cleaved living flesh.

Behind Elerian, the shriek emitted by his attacker brought Ascilius and the rest of his companions leaping to their feet as if stung by fire. As Elerian raised Acris to strike again, Ascilius looked wildly about him with his hammer clenched in his right hand and his lantern raised high in his left. Next to him, Dacien and Triarus stood with swords clenched in white knuckled fists, staring about them in confusion. Cyricus and Cordus stood back to back, their axes grasped in shaking hands. As Acris began its shining descent, Elerian saw his attacker dart away into the darkness beyond the lantern light, never more than an indistinct shadow to his eyes on account of its great speed and the gloom which seemed to cloak it.

“What was that noise?” demanded Ascilius of Elerian, looking both wild eyed and dazed from his sudden awakening.

“Something attacked me again,” replied Elerian who was none too clear in his own mind on account of the power Acris had drained from him so suddenly. He examined the tip of his blade where black blood stained the bright steel. “I injured it again, but I do not think the wound was serious. The creature in no way resembled the monster described by Dardanus. I did not get a clear look at it, for it moved too quickly, but I would say it was about the size of a Dwarf.”

“Let me try again to reveal it,” said Ascilius raising his left hand. A fist-sized mage light blossomed near the ceiling of the chamber as he cast his charm, thrusting back the darkness surrounding the company. Nothing extinguished the light this time.

“Look there!” shouted Cordus and Cyricus together, both of them pointing to a small, hunched over figure, standing barely thirty feet away from them. The stranger’s identity was not readily apparent, for form and features were both obscured by a dark cloak whose hood was drawn low, obscuring the face behind it. Apparently startled by the light which had so suddenly exposed it, the mysterious figure turned and scuttled away toward the north end of the cavern.

“A Dwarf!” shouted Ascilius in surprise. “He must have mistaken us for enemies! Wait!” he cried. “Do not run away. We mean you no harm!” Despite his assurances of their peaceful intentions, the hunched over figure did not slow, continuing instead to scurry away between the stalagmites that covered the floor of the cavern. At that moment, a sudden conviction took hold in Ascilius’s mind that he had found one of the missing scouts sent by Dardanus to explore the passageway. Such was the fervor of his conviction that it never occurred to him to wonder how an old Dwarf could run so quickly or how he could have survived at all for so many years in this dark and dangerous place.

“I must reach him before he disappears again,” thought Ascilius to himself. At that moment, his mage light was suddenly extinguished, plunging the cavern into darkness again. Undeterred, forgetting all else, Ascilius snatched up his lantern. Before any of his startled companions could lift a hand to stop him, he bolted after the stranger, so obsessed with reaching the small figure running away from him that he failed to notice that the heaviness and weariness that he had experienced in his limbs before had both vanished. With his body restored to its natural state, Ascilius fairly flew across the stony floor of the cavern. Traveling in great bounds, he soon came in sight of the little cloaked form that he was pursuing, but despite his best efforts, he was unable to close the last small gap between himself and the stranger, who stayed remained just out of his reach.

Standing in the small pool of light cast by the second lantern, Elerian was the first of the company to recover his wits after Ascilius’s abrupt and unexpected departure.

“Come back!” he shouted, for he did not share Ascilius’s belief that the stranger was a Dwarf. “No Dwarf was ever as hard and stony as that creature you pursue.”

If Ascilius heard Elerian’s warning, he paid it no mind, instead continuing his determined pursuit, his wildly bouncing lantern casting wild shadows all around him as each stride that he took carried him farther away from his companions, into darkness and danger from which he might not ever emerge alive.

THE GATE

“I must follow him while I can still see his light,” said Elerian to his companions as Ascilius’s light continued to recede into the distance. “Once he disappears from sight, it may be impossible to find him if something happens to him out there.”

“Go then,” urged Dacien. “The rest of us will wait for you here.”

“Do not let the lanterns go out,” said Elerian to Dacien as he shed his pack. “I will leave you Acris, for ordinary weapons will be useless against the creature that attacked me earlier.”

“You may need the sword more,” protested Dacien, but by then Elerian had already forced the Acris’s hilt into his left hand. Without another word, Elerian darted after Ascilius whose bobbing mage light continued to recede into the distance. With his first stride, he found that the weight was gone from his feet, and that he was now able to light a mage light to illuminate his path.

“It is almost as if I am now allowed freedom of movement and light in order to facilitate my pursuit of Ascilius,” he thought suspiciously to himself. “What does the creature he pursues plan for us, I wonder?” At his utmost speed, Elerian ran after his companion, all the animosity the events of the last few days had engendered in him toward the Dwarf wiped away by fear for Ascilius’s safety.

“Ascilius must be chasing the hag Corbulo warned us about,” said Cyricus abruptly to the others as Elerian vanished into the darkness. His face was pale and fear filled his dark eyes as he spoke. “If something happens to him and Elerian, the rest of us will never find our way out of this terrible place.”

“Nonsense,” insisted Dacien at once. “They are two mighty warriors pursuing one small creature who appears to be nothing more than an old Dwarf. I am sure they will catch him and return soon,” he said reassuringly. His private thoughts, however, were none so comforting, for like Elerian, he was suspicious of this stranger who had appeared so suddenly out of the darkness. Looking back to the north, he saw that Elerian’s light bobbing about like a firefly in the dark as it disappeared and then reappeared among the columns that covered the floor of the cavern. Ahead of him Ascilius’s light was now only a pinprick in the distance.

“Their lights will vanish soon, for this chamber is vast beyond all imagining,” thought Dacien to himself, involuntarily tightening his grip on the silver haft of Acris with his left hand. Between his clenched fingers the silvery argentum wrapped around the hilt of the sword now shone with a pale light. As a precaution, he drew his own sword from its scabbard and laid it on the ground with the point facing Elerian’s mage light, thus preserving the direction of his flight. Masking his unease with a confidence he did not feel, Dacien now spoke to his companions, seeking to rouse them from the fear that had crept over them at Cyricus’s melancholy words.

“Take heart. We need only wait here, keeping a light burning so that Ascilius and Elerian can find their way back to us,” he said encouragingly. Sliding his pack from his shoulders, he then sought out the lantern which he was certain Ascilius had placed there, hoping the additional light would bolster the courage of the others.

While Dacien sought to reassure his companions, Elerian was doing his best to catch Ascilius. As he flitted like a shadow through the dark, the distance between him and the Dwarf steadily narrowed until he could see Ascilius’s sturdy form running ahead of him. When he shouted for the Dwarf to stop, to his surprise, for Ascilius had paid him no mind up to this point, his companion slowed and then came to a standstill.

“He has come to his senses and ended this rash pursuit,” was Elerian’s relieved thought at the sight, but he was mistaken to think that Ascilius had finally decided to listen to reason. His companion had stopped only because the elusive shape ahead of him had also stopped a short distance away from him with its back toward him. Approaching eagerly, Ascilius laid his left hand on the figure's right shoulder. His words of welcome died abruptly on his lips, however, when the hooded figure turned its head. Instead of the bearded, craggy face of some patriarch of his race, his raised lantern suddenly illuminated a beardless, loathsome, wrinkled face from which dead white eyes without pupils stared at him blankly. When the creature pulled back its thin lips in a horrible grimace, Ascilius saw a mouthful of pointed yellow fangs such as no Dwarf ever possessed. In spite of himself, he gave a loud yell of surprise and stepped back, but with the speed of a striking snake, the creature lunged after him. Ascilius felt a sudden sharp pain in his right shoulder followed by a wave of weakness that sapped all his strength. The lantern slipped from his left hand, and he felt himself falling. When he landed heavily on his right side, the last thing he saw before lapsing into unconsciousness was the burning pool of lamp oil from his shattered lantern, the flames leaping up not far from his booted feet.

Elerian started when he heard Ascilius’s cry of mingled surprise and alarm ring through the cavern, followed by the crash of shattering glass. By the light of the Dwarf’s fallen lantern, he saw his companion lying motionless on the ground with something dark and indistinct crouched over him. As Elerian sprang forward toward Ascilius’s recumbent form, the small, cloaked figure crouched over him, displaying a remarkable strength, threw the Dwarf over its left shoulder and fled north again. As he passed the pool of burning lamp oil, Elerian’s mage light vanished, leaving him in the dark. Without missing a stride, he opened his third eye and saw, at once, Ascilius’s golden shade, seemingly floating through the darkness.

“He still lives,” was Elerian’s relieved thought. Then, looking more closely, he saw a second shade beneath the Dwarf, a shade whose color was a deep black, something he had never before seen or imagined, and he understood for the first time how the creature carrying Ascilius had escaped the notice of his third eye. Blending into the darkness around it, it only became visible when it moved, hence the brief flickers of motion he had noted before. A shiver ran up Elerian’s spine as he wondered how many times the creature had crept up close to him and his companions, lurking unseen and unnoticed just out of reach of the small pool of yellow light cast by their lantern.

He was within a few a strides of laying his hands on Ascilius’s still form when the golden light cast by the Dwarf’s shade abruptly vanished. Alarmed lest he lose Ascilius for good, Elerian looked frantically around him, discerning, after a moment, a deeper shade of black in front of him and to his left. He had finally arrived at the perimeter of the cavern. But where was Ascilius? Looking closely with his third eye, Elerian detected a subtle variation in the dark color of the wall to his left. When he approached it, the light of his own golden shade revealed the entrance to a tunnel some six or seven feet high and wide. Recklessly, Elerian darted into it, running through a twisting passageway with all the speed he could muster, for his greatest fear now was that he would fail to regain sight of Ascilius and the creature that had him in its grasp.

When the tunnel suddenly split in two, Elerian paused, unsure of which path Ascilius’s abductor had chosen. Finally, in the left hand passageway, he heard a faint rustle, like cloth rubbing together. Drawing Rasor from his belt with his right hand, he sprang through the tunnel entrance. As his feet touched the ground, he saw a flicker of motion on his left from a man-sized opening in the wall of the tunnel and stabbed at it without thinking. The argentum etched on the blade of Acer lit the dark with thin lines of white fire, illuminating the featureless face of a dark shade. Closing his third eye, Elerian saw a horrible, fanged visage twist aside to his left, so that his knife blade scored its right cheek instead of plunging into its eye. With a high-pitched shriek the creature stumbled back into the side tunnel. Elerian followed it at once, opening his third eye again as the light from Rasor faded. He saw the gleam of gold retreating away from him, borne up by a dark, indistinct shade. The creature was carrying Ascilius away from him again.

Without hesitation, Elerian sped down the side tunnel. His light, quick strides had again brought him within a few feet of Ascilius when the tunnel suddenly took a sharp turn to the left. Slowing and turning on his left heel, Elerian cursed when he saw that he had fallen behind again, for the creature, familiar with its underground haunts, had negotiated the turn without slowing in the least. Springing after it, Elerian saw, out of the corners of his eyes, that the tunnel walls had vanished, indicating that he had entered into a cave. No more than a dozen feet ahead of him, the creature that he pursued suddenly vanished before his eyes, taking the still form of Ascilius with it.

Elerian stopped involuntarily then, wondering if the creature had leaped or fallen into some fissure in the floor of the chamber. A blaze of light that had been muted by Ascilius’s golden shade now smote his eyes, emanating from a place close to where the Dwarf had disappeared. All thought fled from Elerian’s mind. As if spell struck, he stood stiffly, mesmerized by what he saw, for the golden light of his shade revealed what could only be a heap of treasure piled as high as his waist against the far wall of the chamber. Seen with his third eye, the wealth before him was marvelously transformed by the golden light emanating from his shade. Earrings and necklaces took on the appearance of hoops and chains of golden fire. Pools of light that must be gems gleamed like varicolored stars. Gold and silver coins shone like small yellow and white suns. As his initial surprise faded and thought returned to him once more, Elerian understood for the first time why dragons sought out treasure to hoard. “What must it look like to their third eye, reflecting the greater light of their shades?” he wondered to himself.

Tearing his gaze, with difficulty, from the dazzling pile of riches before him, he anxiously sought once more for Ascilius. He saw no sign of the Dwarf, but an almost imperceptible waver on the far side of the chamber now attracted his notice. Approaching closer, he was able to discern for the first time a thin, roughly circular line of gleaming ebony, roughly man high that undulated and flexed almost as if it had a life of its own.

“This is certainly a portal,” thought Elerian to himself. “The creature I pursued must have leapt through it, bearing Ascilius away with it, for there is no other way out of this chamber.” With his keen gaze, he noted how the area circumscribed by the restless line constantly changed in size, growing and shrinking randomly. “This must be a natural opening like those described by the Peregrin,” Elerian decided. “If a spell had opened this gate, its dimensions would be fixed and not in a state of flux.” Viewing the magical gate from the side, Elerian saw that it hovered several inches away from the stone wall of the chamber, allowing him to pass his left hand behind it. Seen edge on, the portal was only a hair thin, wavering line. Taking up a fist-sized stone with his left hand from the floor of the chamber, Elerian pressed it against that dark line, sheering the rock in half with no effort at all.

“The edge of this thing must be avoided at all costs,” thought Elerian soberly to himself. Although very little time had passed since he began his examination of the magical gate, he was gripped now by a renewed sense of urgency lest he lose sight of the creature that had taken Ascilius. Drawing Acer from his left boot with his left hand, Elerian straightened again and took a deep breath. Holding a knife in each hand, he fixed his keen gaze on the portal. When it suddenly expanded to a size that would admit him, he jumped through its dark center without hesitation, even though he had no idea what he would find on the other side.

Elerian was vastly relieved when his feet came to rest on firm, stony ground, for he might have as easily have come out above some great cliff or in a sea or lake. Glancing behind him, he saw the shining, shifting outline of the gate hanging in midair. Even from a few feet away, it was difficult to see because of its dark color. Closing his third eye, Elerian looked up and saw that there was a sky dark as jet overhead. Although there was something familiar about the nets of bright stars that were scattered across it, they did not fall into any of the familiar patterns that he knew. Looking around him, for the stars overhead provided his night-wise eyes with more than enough light to see by, he sought for some sign of Ascilius in the barren, stony waste that stretched away to the horizon all around him. He saw no living thing in all that bleak landscape, but like the heavens, the countryside around him was oddly familiar. He remembered, then, a scene he had observed in his orb when he and Ascilius were in the Dwarf’s workshop in Ennodius.

“Another random bit of my future revealed to no purpose,” he thought wryly to himself. “Had the sphere also shown me what was to occur in this place, I might have prepared myself better to deal with it.”

Certain now in his heart that he had left the Middle Realm behind and was now somewhere Outside, Elerian exhaled and then took a first tentative breath, drawing cold air into his lungs that was laced with an acrid, bitter tang that dried his nose and mouth, but which did not otherwise seem harmful. No sound came to his ears as he stood there and not the least breath of wind stirred across the lifeless wastes around him which looked as if they had never been warmed by the golden light of a sun. Elerian started back involuntarily when, not far in front of him, a small, cloaked figure suddenly leaped from behind a huge boulder carrying Ascilius over its right shoulder. After staring fixedly at Elerian for a moment, the figure turned and fled into the trackless waste behind it, leaving Elerian to make a difficult choice.

“If I follow the creature, I may never find my way back to the gate behind me, and Anthea will die alone instead of in my arms,” thought Elerian to himself. “If I return to the passageway, Ascilius will likewise perish alone. How am I to choose between them?” he wondered, torn between love for Anthea and loyalty to Ascilius. As he stood in anguished thought, Anthea’s fair face suddenly appeared before his mind’s eye, her cool blue eyes looking steadily into his own.