The Quest (The Hidden Realm Book 5) (15 page)

Despite these commonsense thoughts, Dacien made no move toward the gate behind him. After musing silently for several more moments, he came to a decision that flew in the face of commonsense but was more agreeable to his sense of loyalty and quiet courage.

“It will likely do no good, but I will bide a bit here,” he thought resolutely to himself. Setting the lantern down by his feet, he stood unmoving with both hands resting on Acris’s pommel, the point of the sword resting on the ground as he kept a silent vigil in the center of the small pool of yellow light cast by his lamp.

In the stony realm of the Gargol, his footsteps slowed by weariness, Elerian bent low under his burden, for Ascilius seemed to grow heavier with each passing moment. Despite his fatigue and the thirst that tormented him, he had decided to hoard the little aqua vitae that remained in his flask in case he was attacked again by the Gargol again.

“I wish that I had had the forethought to bring my water bottle as well as my flask,” thought Elerian regretfully to himself as he plodded along.

“You will succumb to exhaustion from the burden you carry long before you expire of thirst,” whispered that part of mind which so often presented him with some unwelcome thought. “Your only hope is to leave the Dwarf. If he is not dead already, he soon will be. Ascilius would be the first to tell you to save yourself.”

“He would indeed,” admitted Elerian to himself. “I would not listen to him, of course,” he concluded with a flash of his old humor as he continued to stagger onward under his heavy burden. He no longer examined the outcroppings he passed for signs of his pursuer, his whole attention now given over to putting one foot slowly in front of the other. When he passed the bones of a mighty skeleton, all horns, spikes, and claws, he stared at it numbly, wondering what could have slain such a fearsome creature. Wearily, he turned away from the wind scoured bones and resumed walking. Not long after that he blinked in surprise at finding himself on his knees.

“When did I fall?” Elerian wondered to himself. He tried to rise and found that he no longer had the strength to lift his heavy burden. The wooden ring on his finger still urged him on, but Elerian found that he no longer had the will to follow it. An overwhelming desire to lie down and sleep crept over him. “Perhaps my invisibility ring will protect me from discovery,” he thought to himself as exhaustion dragged him inexorably toward the ground.

“It is more likely to slay you in your weakened state,” warned a familiar voice. “Look up you fool!”

“Anthea!” thought Elerian to himself, wondering if her shade had come to him across the gulf that separated them. He looked first with his third eye and then with his normal sight, but he was saw no sign of her. What he did see was a tiny, yellow spark of light in the distance. Fixing his eyes on that bright pinprick, Elerian wondered if it was real or just an invention of his imagination. Long moments passed, but the light did not fade away. Even more promising, his wooden ring urged him on in that direction.

“Surely that is the light from a lantern and not some phantasm,” thought Elerian to himself. “At least one of the company must have followed me through the portal.” With that thought Dacien’s face appeared before Elerian’s mind’s eye. Although quiet and self-effacing, Anthea’s brother had more than once displayed the kind of steady courage that would have brought him through the dark cavern.

“Let me see if my guess is right,” thought Elerian to himself. Sending away his invisibility ring to conserve the little strength that he had left, he took another sip of his dwindling store of Aqua vitae to renew his strength. Even with the magical potion coursing through his veins, however, he found that he had not the strength to rise with Ascilius on his back.

“Leave him,” whispered that part of him that wanted only to survive. “You no longer have the strength to carry him.” Ignoring the insistent urging of that voice, Elerian instead joined his own belt and that of Ascilius together. Lying down back to back with the Dwarf, he strapped Ascilius tightly to his shoulders.

“Having brought him this far, I will not abandon him now,” he thought stubbornly to himself as he forced himself up onto his hands and knees. Slowly, he began to crawl, toward the bright speck in the distance, following the urging of the wooden ring on his right hand. With each hard-earned foot that he covered, the stony ground bruised his hands and knees, and Ascilius grew in weight until he seemed to weigh as much as one of the boulders that he passed, but still Elerian pressed on until he was abruptly roused from the mental torpor he had sunk into by a deep, familiar voice.

 “Why am I strapped onto your back?” asked Ascilius in a confused voice.

“You are awake,” replied Elerian in surprise. “Can you walk do you think?”

“I can wiggle my fingers a bit, but that is all,” was Ascilius’s disappointing reply. “What happened to me to put me into this state?”

“You were poisoned, I think, by that creature that you pursued,” replied Elerian. “After it carried you through a portal, I rescued you. I am trying to return now to the gate which will bring us back to our own realm.”

“You would make better progress if you walked instead of creeping about on your hands and knees,” observed Ascilius, who was unaware of Elerian’s weakened state.

“Walking would indeed be preferable, but I find myself unable to rise under your great weight,” replied Elerian sardonically. “If we survive this adventure, you might give some thought to losing a few pounds.”

“There is nothing wrong with my weight,” replied Ascilius at once in an outraged voice. “If you are so lacking in strength then rest a bit. I am certain that I will be able to walk soon.”

“Stopping now is not a good idea,” replied Elerian dryly. “I think that the creature that abducted you may still be following us.”

“Give me a few more moments to recover and I will deal with that scrawny little traitor with my bare hands,” replied Ascilius angrily. “He bit me on the shoulder!”

“He is not so small now, Ascilius,” replied Elerian dryly. “You were attacked by a shape changer.”

“He cannot be so large that I cannot deal with him,” insisted Ascilius wrathfully.

“He is larger and stronger than a Troll now,” replied Elerian matter-of-factly, “and is armed with formidable claws and teeth as well as a great pair of horns. He also walks about on a pair of cloven hoofs that look deadly as steel axes. As if that was not enough, he also breathes fire from his nostrils.” A long silence followed Elerian’s description of the Gargol.

“Perhaps you should crawl a bit faster then,” suggested Ascilius at last, his voice gone from belligerent to apprehensive. Elerian’s reply froze on his lips when a weird ululation shattered the darkness behind him.

“Good heavens! What made that noise?” asked Ascilius nervously. 

“I have no idea,” replied Elerian wearily. The fire from the aqua vitae had faded away again, and the moment had come when he was unable to lift his hands or knees even one more time. Full of despair, he looked up and saw to his surprise that a pool of golden light was now only a few hundred feet away. Elerian was unable to ascertain if anyone stood inside of it, for he was unwilling to look directly into it lest its rays spoil his night sight.

“Who would have believed that I had come so far,” Elerian thought in amazement to himself.

“Elerian, you must leave me here,” said Ascilius abruptly, his grim voice interrupting Elerian’s thought. Able to raise his head now, the Dwarf had observed in the space between his knees a number of long, lean shapes running across the starlit plain in a loose pack at no great distance from himself and Elerian. Ascilius had no doubt that the creatures were hunting him and his companion, for they were running exactly in his and Elerian’s direction. “If you continue to carry me, we will be overtaken by a pack of hunters in a few moments,” added Ascilius quietly. Beneath him, the Dwarf felt Elerian rise to his knees.

“At last he is using his commonsense,” thought Ascilius approvingly to himself as Elerian undid the belts that held them together, allowing him to slide onto the ground. “Run!” urged Ascilius as Elerian rose to his feet behind him. “I can move my arms now! At least one of the creatures will die with me.” Forcing himself into a sitting position, the Dwarf waited fearlessly as another of those strange, eager cries issued from the approaching pack. Behind him Elerian gulped the last of his aqua vitae, but instead of running off, bent forward and hoisted Ascilius onto his shoulders.

“Drop me you!” half-wit roared the Dwarf as Elerian turned and sprinted for the nearby light. Keeping his head down, Elerian ignored Ascilius and ran with all the speed he could muster. Behind him, seemingly at his heels now, he heard eager whines and the scrabbling of hard claws. With gritted teeth, he waited for the first of his pursuers to sink its teeth into his flesh.

TIMELY ASSISTANCE

His eyes blinded by the light of his lantern, Dacien tried without success to penetrate the wall of darkness before him when he heard Ascilius’s voice. When a misshapen form suddenly rushed out at him from out of the murk, he started back in surprise. His heart pounding violently in his chest, he raised Acris high in his right hand, ready to strike but instead arrested his stroke when his eyes informed him that it was Elerian who rushed by him with Ascilius draped across his shoulders. A fierce snarl now drew Dacien’s attention to the creature that leapt out of the darkness on Elerian’s heels. Supple as a snake, large as a pony, its hairless skin appearing hard as stone in the lamplight, it sprang toward Elerian’s back, crimson eyes burning with the lust to slay and rend as its tusked jaws gaped wide to engulf Elerian’s head and neck.

Reacting with instincts honed in dozens of battles, Dacien swiftly brought Acris down in a two handed stroke as the creature leaped past him. With a flash of white light from the argentum in its blade and hilt, Acris sheared through hunter’s neck, its headless body collapsing in a heap just inside the ring of light cast by the lantern, a fountain of dark blood spraying out from the stump of its neck. Although staggered by the power the sword had taken from him to slice through the creature’s stony flesh, Dacien smoothly reversed the direction of his swing by flexing his elbows. With all the power of his arms and shoulders, he swung Acris to his right as a second hunter leapt out of the darkness in front of him. Emitting a second flash of silvery light, the sword’s bright blade passed through the creature’s open mouth, shearing off its upper jaw and the top of its brain pain. Fighting off a wave of weakness, Dacien retreated as more of the creatures appeared. The hunters, however, advanced no farther than their fallen pack mates. A cacophony of growls and snarls rose up as they ripped open the underbellies of their fallen comrades, using the tusks that projected from their lower jaws like knives. Dacien watched in horror as they devoured the organs that resided there, snarling and snapping at each other over the choicest morsels. Black blood that steamed in the cool air of the plain puddled around their clawed feet as they partook of their grisly feast.

While Dacien fought off his pursuers, Elerian had run up to the portal hanging in the air behind his companion. Raising Ascilius from his shoulders with both hands, he suddenly dropped his arms and reversed his wrists so that the Dwarf fell into his outstretched arms. Before Ascilius could object, Elerian tossed him lightly through the opening, which was now almost man-sized. Instead of following Ascilius through the portal, however, Elerian drew both his knives and spun around on his left heel. Dacien was now on his right, having retreated as far as possible from the pack of creatures that were savagely gorging themselves barely twenty feet away.

“There will be no easy death for Dacien and me if these creatures get ahold of us,” thought Elerian grimly to himself as he observed them feeding. “They will devour us without troubling themselves to kill us first.”

Turning to Dacien, Elerian said softly, “Jump through the portal. I will follow you.”

“You jump through first, for Anthea has no chance of being rescued without your assistance,” replied Dacien calmly.

“You can barely hold Acris,” objected Elerian who had noticed how the sword drooped in Dacien’s hands. These creatures will tear you to pieces if they attack again.”

“Then that is my fate,” replied Dacien stubbornly. “Your task is to rescue my sister.”

“And I thought Dwarves were stubborn,” thought Elerian to himself, torn between admiration for Dacien’s courage and frustration at his refusal to leave.

“Let us wait then until the portal opens wide enough to admit both of us at the same time,” he suggested to Dacien, at the same time moving a little away to his left so that he could watch the portal out of the corner of his right eye. It had now shrunk down to an opening the size of a man’s head.

“The moment the doorway opens wide enough, I will toss him through it as I did Ascilius,” thought Elerian determinedly to himself. “He is weak as a newborn and will not be able to resist.” Side by side the two companions waited anxiously for the unpredictable gate behind them to open wide again, but as long moments passed it never grew larger than a foot across.

One by one, the fierce creatures feeding at the edge of the pool of lantern light raised their fearsome heads. They had stripped their fallen pack mates to the bone but in no way looked sated. Forming a half circle, they began to creep toward Elerian and Dacien, intending to attack from all sides at once.

“There are too many,” thought Elerian regretfully to himself as the first of the creatures gathered its courage and leaped toward him. “I will die here instead of at Anthea’s side as I had hoped.”

At that moment the portal behind Elerian suddenly enlarged, growing to the point where it would admit one person. Like a short, bearded projectile, Ascilius burst through it with Fulmen in his right hand and his shield in his left, rudely thrusting Elerian and Dacien aside as he rushed past them. Eyes gleaming with the lust for battle, he pushed the creature that had leaped toward Elerian off balance with his shield, crushing its skull with Fulmen before it could recover. Leaping into the midst of the encircling pack, he fended the creatures off with his shield while at the same time swinging his hammer with swift, deadly accuracy, crushing the skulls of three of the hunter’s in the blink of an eye. Behind Ascilius, Elerian raised his hands and threw both his knives at once. Rasor and Acer sped past the Dwarf, each of them striking a hunter in the eye and killing it instantly. After Dacien accounted for another of the creatures with Acris when it attempted to spring on Ascilius from behind, the rest of the decimated pack vanished like a smoke before a stiff wind, retreating into the darkness beyond the lantern light. Darting forward, Elerian seized Ascilius by the collar just as he was about to follow them.

“Take one more step and I will freeze you where you stand,” he threatened the Dwarf.

“We have them on the run,” grumbled Ascilius fiercely, but he gave off straining against Elerian’s restraining hand, knowing from experience that his companion’s threat was not an idle one. After stooping to retrieve his knives, Elerian opened his third eye and gazed intently into the darkness beyond the lantern light. In front of him, he saw the dark, four-footed shades of the hunters prowling about. Behind them, it seemed to him that a much larger shade silently urged them to renew their attack, a sight that filled Elerian with an urgency to quit this realm as soon as possible.

“Let us go while we can,” he urged his companions.

“You first,” insisted Dacien and Ascilius at once.

To save further argument, Elerian leaped through the gate which was still as high and wide as a tall man. Dacien followed him, stumbling a bit from weariness. Ascilius leaped through last, bringing the lantern with him. As the Dwarf swayed on his feet, Elerian reached out his right hand to steady him. By the lantern light, he could see that Ascilius’s face was pale and drawn. In spite of his vigorous attack on the hunters, he was obviously not fully recovered from the effects of his poisoning.

“What are we to do now?” Dacien asked Elerian. “Those creatures are likely to follow us through the gate when they screw up their courage again.”

“We must seal this opening or close it somehow,” replied Elerian as he turned his attention from Ascilius to the portal. “My own observations and the words of the Gargol lead me to believe that this portal is a natural rift created by some fault in the barriers between our world and the dark realm on the other side, for it sustains itself without drawing power from any mage, something that a gate opened with a spell would not do.”

“What difference does it make how it came about?” asked Ascilius impatiently. “Let us pile stones in front of it instead of making sage observations about its nature.”

”That would only provide a temporary solution to our problem,” objected Elerian pensively. “There may be a way to close the portal permanently, but before I attempt it, I want you and Dacien to leave this cave.”

“What are you planning to do?” asked Ascilius uneasily.

“Something dangerous and most likely foolish too,” replied Elerian dryly. “If the energy of the gate is natural and ungoverned as I suspect, it may flow freely into my ring if I bring the two into contact. If the resultant flow of power overwhelms the capacity of my ring to absorb it, however, I would prefer that the two of you were not nearby,” concluded Elerian soberly.

“I will not leave you here alone!” said Dacien without hesitation. “If things go awry, I may be able to help you.”

“I most certainly will not leave either,” insisted Ascilius.

“It is foolish for all of us to risk death,” argued Elerian, but the stubborn looks on the faces of his companions told him that it was pointless to argue further.

“I hope that we do not all perish from a surfeit of nobility,” grumbled Elerian to himself as he turned once more toward the gate. Uncertain of what would happen next, he opened his third eye as he extended his right hand slowly but steadily toward the gleaming line of dark energy that formed its boundary. When the silver ring on his third finger touched that restless boundary, it remained unscathed as if that deadly edge had no power over it. Immediately Elerian felt his ring grow warm then hot as it absorbed the energy of the portal. When the silvery band of metal began to scorch the flesh of his finger, Elerian gritted his teeth against the pain, keeping it pressed firmly against the dark line which delineated the gate, for the thought of the hunters and the dark shape he had seen behind them urged him to close the portal as rapidly as possible. Close to his hand, a head suddenly thrust itself through the shrinking opening, tusked snout wrinkled into a fierce snarl. Not daring to close his third eye lest he lose contact with the portal, Elerian saw it only as a dark shade, but he guessed at once what it was. Steadfastly, he kept his ring pressed against the boundary of the portal even as the creature opened its tusked jaws to shear off his wrist and hand. Then, before that fearsome maw could close, the dark line circumscribing the creature’s head suddenly vanished entirely. Cleanly detached from its neck, the hunter’s head fell to the stony floor of the chamber, spraying dark blood as it came to rest almost at Elerian’s feet.

“Cut off clean as a whistle,” observed Ascilius wonderingly. “I would not have leaped through that opening quite so blithely if I had known it could dice me up so finely.”

“I had no idea of the danger either,” said Dacien with a shiver.

After a final look with his magical eye to make certain that portal was shut, Elerian, using his left hand, hastily removed the scorching circle of metal that his ring had become, blistering his fingertips the moment they came into contact with hot argentum. His ring emitted a sound like a clear chime when he dropped it onto the stony floor of the cave.

“It could have been worse,” thought Elerian to himself as he examined the angry, red circle of seared and blistered flesh that circled the second finger of his right hand. “My greatest fear was that the ring would be destroyed by the sudden influx of power, slaying all three of us.”

While he waited for his ring to cool, Elerian probed the air where the portal had hung with the long, strong fingers of his left hand, but felt only cold stone beneath his damaged fingertips. “The gate is closed, hopefully for all time,” he thought to himself. When he turned to his companions, he saw that Dacien was staring at him with a thoughtful, almost fearful look in his gray eyes. Elerian laughed suddenly, the clear, warm sound filling the chamber.

“Do not stare at me like that, Dacien,” he said with a smile. “I am still the same Elerian who escaped with you from Calenus!”

“You are the same,” replied Dacien, “but I know now the true extent of your power and that of the ring that you carry.”

“Be wary of dispensing such praise, Dacien,” said Ascilius suddenly in his deep voice. “It will only swell his head and encourage him to exercise that misguided sense of humor of his.”

“Ascilius must be feeling better if he is insulting me again,” observed Elerian to Dacien. Wordlessly, he and Ascilius eyed each other, each relieved that the hard feelings between them had apparently been left behind in the dark realm from which they had just escaped.

“I must tend to your wound,” said Elerian gruffly to the Dwarf as he helped Ascilius strip off his chain mail and leather undershirt. “See where he was been bitten,” Elerian said to Dacien as he pulled aside the collar of Ascilius’s loose linen shirt, exposing four wide spaced puncture marks on Ascilius’s left shoulder where the Gargol’s fangs had penetrated through his chain mail and into the flesh beneath. The area surrounding the two larger punctures was dead black now, as if the flesh was slowly dying from whatever substance the shape changer had infused into the wounds. “His wounds were poisoned, but I think the venom was only meant to immobilize him so that the creature could enjoy his death at some later time,” continued Elerian. “The creature used a different kind on me when it injured my face,” he added wryly. Both Ascilius and Dacien looked with concern and sympathy at the left side of Elerian’s face where the flesh had been eaten almost through by the Gargol’s venom.

Elerian now took up his ring which had cooled. With his third eye, he saw that an enormous dark band of energy shot through with threads of gold swirled around it like a cloud, for his ring had not only closed the portal, but had also captured the forces which had kept it open, leaving him with a vast reservoir of power at his disposal. A half-formed plan to reach Anthea immediately began to take shape in his mind, but Elerian resolutely set it aside.